


Persona 5: Honor Among Thieves

by Doccylarssonseraphim



Category: Persona 5
Genre: F/M, RL Thieves AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21732712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doccylarssonseraphim/pseuds/Doccylarssonseraphim
Summary: Modern-day Japan is unchanged. Corruption is rampant and the sloth of the people allows the strong to do whatever they want. However, a recent string of heists by a group of criminals who leave behind calling cards is getting more and more attention. The so-called "Phantom Thieves" have gained notoriety for being impossible to catch. A down-on-her luck police officer has a chance encounter with them, and resolves to catch them and bring them to justice. But is justice really that simple?
Relationships: Amamiya Ren/Niijima Makoto
Comments: 31
Kudos: 133





	1. Prologue: Vanity

The Regent Diamond. The biggest, finest diamond to ever exist. Supposedly discovered in 1689 by a slave in colonial India, the slave hid it inside a large wound in his leg in an attempt to keep it to himself. But an English sea captain discovered it, tore it out, killed the slave for it and sold it to an Indian merchant.

Eventually, after passing through countless hands thanks to either purchase or theft, it came into the hands of the French Regent in 1717, thereby gaining the name of the Regent Diamond. It even came into the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte, who mounted the diamond on the pommel of his two-edged sword.

At last though, it found its way to a museum to be preserved forever, so that humanity as a whole might enjoy its splendor. Such a beautiful, priceless thing of incredible luster. What a shame that it will eventually suffer the same fate every beautiful thing that befalls the things that make a tour to Ichiryusai Madarame’s exhibit - to be replaced by an elaborate fake and made to fuel his boundless vanity.

And we can’t have that, now can we?”

“Shut up, damnit! You’re gonna alert every guard in the entire museum, you dummy!” The voice of the master thief’s technology expert resonated in his ear, causing him to flinch involuntarily.

“Won’t you permit me this little indulgence, Oracle?” His voice was low, but not hushed. “It’s not every day I get to do this, you know.”

“For the last time, use the codenames I gave you! I am ‘Wizard’ and you’re ‘Sitting Duck’!”

“Of course. This is Peking Duck, I hear you just fine ‘Blizzard’,” Even whilst cloaked in shadow, the thief’s smirk seemed to shine through like smooth white crystal - not unlike the diamond he was there to steal.

“NO! _I’m_ ‘Wizard’! _You’re_ ‘Sitting Duck’!”

“Understood, ‘Lizard’.”

“Again, I’m - ugh, forget it. You’re not taking this seriously.”

“Not at all. Now will you please relax, Oracle? And while you’re at it, tell me what I’m working with?”

“Alright alright,” Oracle replied, letting out a groan. “The night shift has just arrived and should have settled in by now. Fortunately, the exhibition hall you’re in is watched by cameras rather than guards. And since _someone, wink wink,_ might have accidentally made the footage loop, you should be fine for now.”

“Roger that,” the shadowy figure replied and descended from his perch. The three coattails of his trenchcoat fluttered in the wind as he fell elegantly like a cat, softly rolling to disperse the energy and getting to his feet with an unparalleled smoothness.

Joker permitted himself a wide smirk and fastened his red gloves as his platinum eyes gleamed for just a moment in the faint museum light.

**_Joker, as…_ **

**_THE THIEF_ **

“I’m down, Oracle. What do you need?”

“I’m still in the basement. Since the museum turns off certain systems at night, the freight elevator isn’t working currently, so I need you to turn it on so I can get inside and hack the museum’s IT system.”

“And explain to me again why you can’t just do that remotely?”

“Because doing it remotely will leave a trail. If I do it on-site I don’t have to bother with a proxy that might be recognized. Better to just… eliminate the potential problem, I guess.”

“Sounds good to me. I’ll get you up in just a second.”

The master thief went to work, leaping up onto a priceless ancient sculpture of the war god Mars in swift, silent jumps that made no noise bar the soft swish of his coat fluttering and the slight creaking of marble straining against his weight.

In one fluid motion he leapt off of the tip of Mars’s spear and swung across the room using a lamp like one would use a rope in a jungle gym. Like a black phantom did he glide through the air and reach the simple freight elevator controls. Following the guidance Oracle had given him days prior, he pulled the cover off and stuffed a simple black pin inside the mess of a motherboard that was inside, allowing the tech wizard’s work to do her magic.

Barely a few seconds passed before a ‘pling’ sounded and Joker removed the pin, followed by him fastening the cover back into place. “I’m all done here, how’re things on your end?”

“Just fine,” Oracle replied with a slight breathlessness that wasn’t there when the two spoke a few seconds ago. “I just gotta rewire this and-AUGH!” Oracle yelped as the offending wiring gave her a light shock. “Wait- wait a minuuuuteee… there!”

The elevator then let out a light ‘pling’ and the doors to the freight elevator opened. Out stepped a ginger-haired young girl in a tight-fitting black-and-green bodysuit wearing a pair of big red goggles. The moment the doors closed behind her, she couldn’t resist doing a little pose.

**_Oracle, as…_ **

**_THE BRAINS_ **

Joker graciously allowed Oracle to do her pose for the few seconds she wanted to, before she awkwardly stopped. “Sorry, I must have… gotten nervous for a moment and crossed the wrong wires. It was way easier back before.”

Joker put a hand on Oracle’s head and gently caressed her. “It’s fine, I get that you’re nervous. Just breathe and relax, otherwise you make mistakes.”

While Oracle was blushing fiercely from the headpat she was getting, she still did see Joker’s point. Trying to regain control of her emotions, she swallowed a big gulp of air and took a deep breath, followed by Joker removing his hand.

“R-Right. So, next step is getting you to the rendezvous point. Madarame’s crazy with the laser security, so I’ll have to stay here and help you get past them.”

“Will you be fine here?”

“Of course. Nobody patrols here ‘cause of the cameras,” Oracle replied confidently.

“And if someone comes in here regardless?” Joker inquired, and Oracle’s confidence immediately drained.

“Oh. I… run around screaming?”

Joker’s shake of the head was more than enough answer.

“I… hide?”

Joker’s smile earned Oracle another headpat. “Exactly. See, you’re getting the hang of this already.”

Oracle couldn’t keep herself from letting out a confident ‘heh-heh-heh’. “You know it!” She said with a little too much volume, which she immediately realized when she saw Joker cringe. “Oh, oh right. Sorry.”

Letting out air through his nose in amusement at Oracle’s antics, Joker adjusted his mask ever so slightly and then turned around. “I’m headed for the rendezvous point. You sure you can make the security shutdown subtle?”

Oracle let out a snort at that. “Puh-lease. You know you’re talking about _me_ , right?”

Joker shrugged almost imperceptibly. “You tend to show off a little too much.”

Oracle just gave Joker a direct stare in reply, and he raised his hands in surrender with that smirk of his. “You make a good point,” he said, but his tone was anything but admitting. More sounding like a kid who was fervently denying that his hand was stuck in the cookie jar, if anything. Before Oracle could raise another word, Joker was already away, gliding through the museum corridors like the wind.

Oracle’s work bordered on magic to Joker sometimes, he barely even needed to slow down to allow her to disable security. He’d jump around as was his leisure, and anything that would normally stop him just… stopped functioning. He internally reminded himself to buy her some sushi once they were done.

Eventually, he made it to his rendezvous point - an empty room in the “Shack” exhibit, a life-like replica of the shack that the ‘master artist’ Madarame worked in before he became famous. He liked to make a show of his supposed humble beginnings, and if that allowed him to sanitize his rise to fame then who would care?

Well, Joker would, if only because the security gate in front of him blocked his way. And unfortunately, they were kept in place by pesky gravity. Gravity wasn’t exactly something Oracle could hack, though Joker figured it was a close thing. No, he’d need a friend for something like that. Unfortunately, said friend… wasn’t there.

“Skull, where are you? I’m at the rendezvous point now,” Joker spoke quietly, making all effort possible to mask his presence.

Skull did not as he came crashing through the ceiling, smiling as he wrecked a part of another shitty adult’s stuff. Nothing more fun in life.

**_Skull, as…_ **

**_THE BRAWN_ **

“Hey Joker, how’s it goin’?” Skull asked with his usual energetic demeanor. “I’m so hyped up, dude, I can’t wait to see that shitty artist’s face on the news when we’re done!”

“I can tell,” Joker replied dryly, though he still had a somewhat amused smile. He really couldn’t stay mad at him. “I hope you don’t mind, but could I trouble you to channel some of that excitement of yours into this gate here?”

That snapped Skull out of his funk. “Oh, right. One sec.” The punk cracked his knuckles and stuck his fingers into the small gap in between the ground floor and the gate itself. With some loud groaning, the punk lifted it up to leave a gap just big enough for a Joker to slide right through. 

And slide through Joker did, like a spray of ink he flew through the gap and ended up on the other side. He quickly located an electrical box, which he gave a good kick to cut the power to the gate, and as Oracle had explained him - when a magnetically locked door loses power, it’s designed to open automatically as a safety feature - to prevent anyone from being locked inside and suffocating or being crushed.

In this case, however, it would also help the Phantom Thieves pull off a heist. As the gate went up, Skull walked in, wiping sweat off his brow behind his skull mask. “Phew. Nothin’ like a good workout.”

“I’m glad to see the heist fits well into your workout plan,” Joker teased and Skull lightly punched him in the shoulder. “Don’t act like you’re not enjoying this, you show-off.”

“I absolutely am,” Joker replied. “I live for this.” Oracle chose this as her ideal moment to interrupt. “Once you two are done _manning it up_ , can we please get a move on?” Skull betrayed his coming intention to Joker with his huge, wide grin.

“What, didya have to hide from somebody, Oracle? Did you wet yourself doing it?”

“ _Shut up!_ ” Oracle screeched over the line, before letting out a gasp. She probably was just either seen or heard. She was quiet for a few seconds, before Joker was comforted by the sound of her exhaling in relief. False alarm, clearly. Followed by Oracle softly requesting “Can we please get going?”

“You heard her, Skull. Let’s get to it,” Joker said with confidence and started walking. It took him a second to notice that Skull wasn’t. “Skull?” he asked, and Skull made an ‘oh, right’ and followed suit.

“Remind me, what am I doin’ again?” Skull then suddenly said, stopping dead in his tracks. Joker whirled around with a questioning stare, not sure what Skull meant. It took a second or two before the punk held his hand over the mic to prevent Oracle from listening. “I didn’t really pay too much attention when Oracle went over the technical stuff. Please don’t tell her.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Joker reassured his friend, causing Skull to break his grin back out. “In order for me to get to the Regent exhibit, Oracle needs to shut down the laser grid guarding it. Problem is, since it’s tied to the whole museum’s electrical grid means she has to shut down practically everything to do it, and if it’s out for more than a few seconds we’re toast. So you have to run across the room and cut the wire to the exhibit before the grid comes back online.”

“A bit of running, huh? I’m pumped, lemme at ‘em!” Skull replied, the punk clearly hyped up. And his confidence was infectious, Joker could attest to that. “I’ll give Oracle the signal once you’re ready. You ready?”

“Ready as ever!” Skull replied, stretching his legs and getting into his running stance. With a nod of acknowledgement, Joker gave Oracle the message. “Alright,” the hacker replied. “The system will only be down for about ten seconds, so you have to nail this. Shutting it down in three... 

Two…

One…

 _Now!_ ”

Skull was off like a lightning bolt, running like he’d already stolen something. The punk blitzed through the room towards the wiring cabinet, the heavy thunks of his boots marking just how _swift_ he was. With three seconds to spare he made it to the other side, ripped the cover of the wiring cabinet off and clipped the red wire.

As the power came back on, trapping Skull on the other side but giving Joker a clean path to the Regent Diamond, the punk did a fist-pump to celebrate his awesomeness. “Nice job, Skull!” Oracle spoke over the comms, amazement in her voice. Skull couldn’t resist replying with a ‘you know it’, and Joker made sure to flash him a thumbs-up for his efforts, and got a pair of devil horns in return.

“The way is clear,” Oracle announced. “Go get ‘em, Joker!”

And like that, Joker was off to get himself a priceless diamond. As Joker disappeared back into the shadows, Skull got ready to prepare the second stage of the plan. “Oracle, is the van alright?”

“Your precious Phan-Van is _fine_ , Skull. I’m not getting anything unusual from the cameras, it’s still parked where it is and nobody’s bugged it because you put it where I told you to put it,” Oracle replied with a tone that was half exasperation and half haughtiness, her signature.

“Yeah yeah,” Skull replied lamely. “I just put a lot of hours into that thing, you know.”

“I know, because you’ve smelled like motor oil for _weeks_ ,” Oracle complained. “And - wait, something just happened!”

“What? What’s goin’ on?!” Skull’s voice immediately rose to it’s usual frantic pitch when he was nervous, and it had good reason to. Without the van their plan was shot.

“A bird just pooped on the windshield.” Even though she knew he couldn’t see it, Oracle punctuated her statement by sticking out her tongue.

* * *

Officer Makoto Niijima was starting to get anxious. She’d been waiting for several hours now since the museum’s closing time, hidden inside a cabinet in the Regent Diamond exhibit. This was her first major case since her promotion, and she was eager to prove herself a capable officer by doing what the rest of the police force had found impossible - catch the infamous Phantom Thieves in the act.

She had approached Ichiryusai Madarame about the fact that she suspected the Phantom Thieves would try to steal the Regent when it came on tour to his museum, and the old artist himself was overjoyed to hear her request to be allowed to hide and catch the Thieves in the act.

And so here she was, stuffed inside a museum cabinet in the ungodly hours of the morning. She was anxious, she had butterflies in her stomach, but most importantly she was restless. Her limbs were twitchy and her service revolver was rubbing awkwardly against her thigh. But it was going to be worth it, because she was going to do the impossible. Finally she had her chance, after she did this there’d be no doubt that Sis-

She was broken out of her train of thought by the sound of footsteps on the soft carpet in the exhibit room. She opened the cabinet door just a _little_ , and oh my god, there he was. Joker, the leader of the Phantom Thieves was barely a few feet away from her. All his attention was on the diamond as he reached through the offline laser grid and grabbed the priceless diamond.

_Now or never, Makoto._

She grabbed her revolver and burst out of the cabinet and yelled “FREEZE!”, pointing the barrel of the gun at the Phantom Thief in front of her. In one motion the Joker turned around to look his aggressor in the eye, diamond still in hand. A billion thoughts went through her head, all different variations of ‘I did it!’

“Oh?” Joker replied, raising his hands in the air - wearing red gloves, Makoto appreciated the irony that she had literally caught him _red-handed_. His demeanor was still confident and unworried, but she knows. She saw him flinch when she told him to freeze. Even if just for an instant.

Keeping her revolver trained on the Joker, she grabbed the Regent out of his hand and put it in her pocket for safekeeping. “Hands behind your back,” she then announced as she produced a pair of handcuffs from her belt. Surprisingly, the Joker complied. Perhaps he just figured that he’d not bother struggle since she outsmarted him? Makoto took a bit of pride in that thought.

“Nice job,” the Joker then said, his hands handcuffed behind his back. Makoto was brought out of her ‘I-just-caught-the-nation’s-most-wanted-thief’ trance by his words. “Huh?” was all that she let slip.

“You got me. Nice job. Didn’t predict this.”

Makoto was honestly weirded out by the Joker’s sudden statement. “Really? You didn’t expect this?”

“Nope. The old generation never tried something like this before.”

“Well, I guess I’m just smarter than them,” Makoto said without thinking. She didn’t notice the smirk that suddenly appeared on the Joker’s face. “You are,” the Joker admitted. “But that makes me wonder, why are you here then? Why’re you alone in doing this?”

Makoto gritted her teeth when she remembered why. _Because nobody at the station trusts me. Because I’m young and book smart. Because I’m a woman._ “Doesn’t matter,” she managed to spit out. “You’re coming with me.”

“Of course,” the Joker then said, tilting himself towards Officer Makoto’s face ever so slightly, reducing the distance between them, and Makoto had to fight off a mysterious unease. She didn’t know why the Joker made her so uneasy.

“Forgive my… curiosity.” By now, his face was barely two centimeters away from hers. Her id and superego were both screeching in alarm, but she couldn’t make herself react. She was frozen in place, but after a few tense seconds her id and superego, along with herself realized why this was happening.

_He’s cute._

The Joker must have seen her realize it, because before she could properly get her bearings and create some distance between themselves, she felt his lips on hers. She practically seized up on the spot. She didn’t even realize that she was closing her eyes, just to enjoy it. Nor did she feel Joker’s hands deftly reaching into her pocket.

After a few seconds, he pulled away, leaving Makoto a confused and furiously blushing mess. Why? Why would he do that? Why would he, _a criminal_ kiss her, _a cop_ ? Even worse, she realized that she’d been enjoying the kiss. A lot more than she should, to the point that she felt grossed out. “My apologies, Officer,” the Joker said, pushing a bit of hair out of her face _with his hand._

Then she realized. She pulled with her hand holding her revolver but found it unmoveable. Looking down revealed why - she was handcuffed to the cabinet door hinge. _With her own handcuffs._

She bit down a curse as she struggled to pull her hand free, and looked back towards the Joker. On the pedestal where the Regent Diamond used to sit now lay a Phantom Thieves calling hard, and right next to it was a Joker with his hands notably _un_ -handcuffed and a very diamond-looking thing in one of them.

“Until we meet again, Officer!” He declared with a booming, theatrical voice and immediately swished out of the exhibit room like a Phantom Thief would.

Makoto’s feelings were complicated at that point. She felt stupid, almost like crying because of her own stupid mistake. She felt disgusted, having to resist shuddering in disgust just from thinking back to what he did to her.

But most of all, she felt a furious, indignant, embarrassed anger towards the escaping Phantom Thief as she punched the cabinet’s wooden hinge, breaking it and leaving her with a free revolver hand with one part of a handcuff dangling from it.

**_“JOKEEEEEEEERRR!!!”_ **

* * *

“I have the Regent,” Joker announced over comms to Oracle and Skull as he ran for it outside the exhibit and down the corridor leading through the entire museum. He stopped for a moment to get his bearings, but the sound of a revolver bullet quickly made him reconsider that.

Joker flashed the approaching Makoto a confident smirk, which managed to just egg her on more. “And a police officer on my tail. We’re making our getaway, _now._ ” He broke back into a sprint. It was just like any other sprint, except now he had a cute cop on his tail. Not that Joker minded, actually.

“Hold it right there!” Makoto cried as she set off after him down the corridor, following him as he elegantly jumped over an old statue of a samurai from ancient times. “Just stop now and surrender, you won’t be harmed!” Joker’s eyes lit up as he thought of just the thing to say as he slid under a metal pipe meant to direct queueing space.

“No thank you,” he said. “-I enjoy having cute girls chase me.” Even if he wasn’t looking, he could almost feel the blush on her face, and when she let out a shriek of rage in response and a bullet swished over his head, he sure as hell heard it. As he rounded a corner, he pulled out his simple emergency handgun and pointed it above him, at the suspended miniature replica of a chinese merchant ship and put a bullet through one of the metal wires holding it up, causing it to fall down right in front of the pursuing police officer and forcing her to stop - or at least that’s what Joker figured it would do.

He couldn’t help but whistle in amazement when the woman just leaped right over it mid-fall, not slowing down even a little in her pursuit of him.

Right around the corner was Skull, who immediately broke into a run alongside Joker, away from the furious Makoto hot on his heels. “Effin’ fuzz! Great timing, huh?” He groaned in half-annoyance and half-anger as the two Phantom Thieves both burst through a doorway and were heading the long way back towards the foyer where Joker and Oracle had originally made their entrance. “What are you talking about?” Joker replied, “-this is where the fun part starts!”

As the two Phantom Thieves ran for their lives from one furious cop hell-bent on capturing them, Joker began to formulate a plan. They weren’t going to get away from her like this, and she’s all but guaranteed to have called the rest of the police force on them. Although… Joker had a feeling that given the choice, she’d prioritize catching him over Skull and Oracle. So he made a plan.

“ _The police are here! Why are they here!?_ ” Oracle practically screamed over the comms, but there was no time for that now. As Joker and Skull made their way to the foyer, Joker grabbed the petite hacker by her arm and made the situation clear.

“Talking time later, running time now!”

She got the message when she saw the approaching figure of Makoto and practically screamed in fear as a result. “This wasn’t part of the plan!” She cried as she ran all she could and then some alongside Joker and Skull - but now, they were at the end of the foyer. One way led out the back, where Skull had parked the Phan-Van (they really needed a better name for it, in hindsight) while the other led up to the second story balcony. All that was there was a huge glass mosaic of Madarame’s most famous painting, “Sayuri”.

“Head to the van! I’ll meet you outside!” Joker cried as he turned right, while Skull and Oracle stormed left. Joker leapt up and ran along the railing to get some distance from Makoto who wasn’t trained as well in jumping, forcing her to climb to get after him.

Man, now that he was staring at it, the mosaic was a hell of a lot bigger than he thought it’d be. Probably thicker glass plating, too. This was going to hurt.

“Hands in the air!” Makoto cried as she finally made it up to the balcony and trained her revolver on Joker. Almost impassively, all Joker did was turn around to look at the officer. Makoto grit her teeth in anger, visibly cocking the hammer. “You’ve got nowhere to run!” She declared, as the sound of police sirens started to ring out by the front entrance of the museum.

Joker just couldn’t resist. “See ya,” he said with an impossibly soft voce, before leaping with all his might shoulder-first into the mosaic, creating a hole in the coloured glass as he swished and swooshed through the air, landing perfectly outside on his feet like a cat.

He gave the police cars and assorted officers a glance, his smirk only growing when he saw the van zoom out behind them. That was all the distraction he needed to make a break for it. He jumped to the rooftops, hopping elegantly from roof to roof without a care in the world across the square in front of the museum, headed west alongside the museum wall.

He jumped across the museum itself and inside one of its zen garden exhibits, and he was half over the second fence to the other side of the museum building when he saw Makoto burst into the garden, having gone through the museum. Impressively intuitive, that girl. She must’ve figured he was going to head away from the police cars, and was moving to catch him.

Or, well, at least she was going to try to.

Finally on the other side of the museum building after having scaled the roof again, the Phan-Van came roaring around the corner just as Makoto smashed her way through one of the back doors with murder in her eyes.

With all his grace and skill, Joker scrambled his way inside the van and Makoto emptied the last four bullets she had in desperation.

One missed completely. One went through Joker’s coattails. One went into the car and slammed into the interior, scaring the living daylights out of Oracle. And the last one missed Joker’s cheek by a hair’s breadth, going through both front windows and spooking Skull something fierce. As a reaction, Skull floored it, and the van roared past Makoto, who desperately attempted to fling herself onto the van and only missing because of how hard Skull had floored it - managing only to plant herself firmly on the asphalt.

Letting out a cry of rage, Makoto slammed her fist into the road when she saw Joker smirk and wave goodbye to her.

**_“THIS ISN’T OVER!!!”_ **

* * *

The heist was perfect - except for a hairy moment at the end - like clockwork. As I looked in the rear-view mirror, wherein I saw a very cute and very angry police officer shake her fist at me as she shrinked in size thanks to us getting away thanks to Skull’s reliably ferocious driving.

“Phantom Thieves Make Off With Diamond”, the morning headlines went. Yup, that’s us. The Phantom Thieves. The most wanted thieves on the planet. Contrary to popular belief, we’re just a humble team of three. Well, when I say “humble”.

I used to call myself a Phantom Thief as a kid, back when all I did was steal cookies and sweets from the adults at the orphanage. Most of the time I was alone, but eventually I found the two would become my lifelong friends. 

There’s Oracle, the brains of the operation, and Skull… the brawn. And as chance would have it, we got adopted by a kindly old cafe owner named Sojiro. Life was good in his cafe for a while… until age finally caught up with him.

Now, the old Leblanc cafe is our own hideout, financed by the pocket change we three make off with on our heists. By day we’re just Ren, Futaba and Ryuji… but by night, we’re Joker, Oracle and Skull. Changing the world, one heist at a time.

I don’t think I could be happier. Sure, I didn’t get much of a normal childhood. But I got two friends I wouldn’t trade for anything.

**_And the best job in the world._ **


	2. Intermission: Vanity

“Yo!” The tell-tale sound of Ryuji being home, accompanied by the soft bell-ring of the door to Cafe & Curry Leblanc being opened, to announce a new guest.

That was followed by the sound of paper wrapping as Ryuji plomped the Big Bang Burger takeaway on the counter. Ren looked up from the day’s dishes to give his adoptive brother a smile.

“Futaba! Dinner’s here!”

Those words were all it took for the young girl to come thundering down from the attic with her therapy cat in tow. “Gimmegimmegimmegimme-” she cried, but was stopped in her tracks by a hand placing itself on her forehead.

“Clean up first,” Ren immediately said, giving the hungry introvert a stern glare. Futaba let out a groan, but acquiesced and went over to the sink to wash her hands. Ryuji only got as far as to open the bag before Ren gave him the same kind of stare and he too had to go over and wash his hands.

As he walked past him, Ryuji swore that he could hear Futaba’s therapy cat laugh at him. “Fleaball,” he spat with a half-smile on his face. That cat was something else. Morgana meowed at him before swiping out with his claws… and then also started to trot towards the bag.

He got about within sniffing distance before he felt the hands of Ren, still in cafe owner’s garb wrap around his tummy and lift him off the counter. “You’re not allowed there, you know that.”

Morgana meowed in response.

“Moaning won’t get you anywhere,” he replied and put Morgana down on the floor. Ren then went to wash his hands as well - as you do right after handling your unruly housecat.

“Any luck with the fence for the Regent?” Ren said after wiping his hands dry with a drying towel. Ryuji was busy unpacking the junk food, placing burgers, sodas and fries in one of the booths.

“Nothing yet. Probably waiting for the fuss to die down before bidding,” Futaba replied, already nibbling on a french fry dipped in both ketchup and mayo.

“They’re really goin’ nuts over this one,” Ryuji said with as wide a smile as always as he shuffled into the opposite side of the booth, to let Ren take the seat next to Futaba - which he did, but not before leaving a full bowl for Morgana, who meowed in appreciation.

“This was an unusually close one,” Ren replied smoothly, even as he felt Futaba scoot over towards him and lean up against him. He had to suppress a shiver when he felt how cold she was.

“‘Cause of that cop, right? The one who camped out in the diamond room? Who the hell was she anyway?” Ryuji spitballed, not really expecting an answer.

“Police Officer Makoto Niijima,” Futaba replied without missing a beat.

“As fast as always,” Ren commented, giving Futaba an affectionate rub on the head, causing her to scoot even closer to him. “Damn,” Ryuji breathed. “You’re really scary sometimes, Futaba.” Futaba let out her usual self-satisfied snicker. “It was easy. After the whole debacle the press practically swarmed her. Spooked her real good.”

“I wonder why,” Ren said with an involuntary smug grin. “Dude,” Ryuji said inbetween bites of burger. “-you literally smooched her to steal the diamond and then handcuffed her-” Chomp. “-she’s gotta be so embarrassed that she could die.” Chomp.

“She struck me as headstrong,” Ren replied smoothly. “And she was cute. But I think you’re reading too much into it.”

“Ren, I could hear what you said to her over the radio. You were practically hitting on her.”

“Was I coming on that strong?”

Futaba just gave her the same look as always when she found his hands in the proverbial cookie jar. “If I was her, I’d want to slink into a corner and fade away.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

* * *

If there was one way to describe how Makoto felt while standing in Chief Inspector Okabe Yoshiaki’s office, waiting for him to drop the bombshell was that she wanted to slink into a corner and die.

The chief inspector’s mood could only accurately be described as _fuming._

“Police Officer Niijima. I am severely disappointed with you.”

“Of course, sir.”

“You have _bitched and moaned_ for an important assignment for months, Niijima. Then I finally give you one, and you _fucking fail me.”_

Makoto bit down her retort and simply gave a curt “I apologize, sir.”

Yoshiaki moved his hand as if he was about to slam it into his desk, but he held it firmly in the air, but Makoto could see that it was shaking regardless. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a few moments, succeeding in calming himself down. “I hope you understand the significance of your failure, Niijima. These… Thieves have been a thorn in our side for years now. At this point the Superintendent-General is desperate to catch them, that’s the _only_ reason you were allowed to try and pull your stunt.”

Makoto wanted to reply that it was the closest anyone has ever been to catching the Thieves, and-

“-but it was the closest we’ve ever been to catching the bastards,” Yoshiaki grunted, his voice considerably lower than it was before. He wasn’t having an easy time saying it, that was for certain. For now, Makoto decided to count her blessings that he was even saying it to begin with.

After finishing his sentence, Yoshiaki remained completely silent but kept his eyes fixed on Makoto, who couldn’t help but shrink just a little under his almost violently stern gaze. “I’ll be blunt, if these weren’t extenuating circumstances then you would have been due for disciplinary action. But at this point we’re desperate to catch these bastards and bring them to justice, desperate enough to overlook this incident. As of now you are permanently assigned to the Phantom Thieves case. Return to your unit, _Senior_ Officer Makoto Niijima.”

That knocked the wind out of Makoto. She was getting _promoted?_

Deciding against doing anything to agitate the Chief Inspector further and just take what she got, Makoto gave a short “Thank you, sir,” and left. She closed the door carefully behind her and managed to keep herself from shuddering until she left the building.

It was late in the evening, far past 18:00 already. Makoto could hear the soft warble of her stomach crying out for something, anything to eat and she could feel the pounding in her head that was her brain begging for a reduction of stress, for her to find the nearest soft thing and pass out on it. It was at this point that she was thankful for not having to worry about having to drive home. Unfortunately, it was pouring down and she didn’t have an umbrella with her.

Shuddering at the chill of the weather, Makoto let out an exhausted sigh and began to walk to the station, headed home.

* * *

With a light tap of his finger, the call was ended and Ren glanced back over to his two adoptive siblings. “That was Iwai,” he announced. “We’ve got a buyer.”

“Woah! Already?” Ryuji couldn’t help but show his surprise. He really did find himself stumped by how quickly the underworld could move sometimes, it had barely been a day since they’d stolen the diamond and already they had a buyer.

“Yup, already. I’m heading out now to meet him at the shop, don’t stay up,” Ren immediately replied as he pulled off his apron and put on his double-hoodie and extra-thick glasses. Futaba let out a whine, but she was used to this by now. As if sensing her change in mood, Morgana jumped up into the booth from the floor and sidled into the orange-haired girl’s lap. Futaba yelped, but her surprise faded immediately when the cat nestled closer to her. Morgana worked wonders, but Futaba hated being alone for too long.

Ren saw her dissatisfaction and with a sigh walked over to the booth where Futaba was greedily still going through her remaining french fries and gently planted his hand on the top of her head, giving it a soft rub. Futaba let out a happy sigh in response, along with “Be back quick, Ren.”

Ren gave his adoptive sister a smile. “Promise,” before walking out into the rain and opening his umbrella, the constant pitter-patter of the rain immediately making itself known the moment he stepped out of the cover of the café. For a moment, he looked back and made sure to make note of the sign hanging on the front door announcing that the cafe was closed today.

He didn’t want any unfortunate slip-ups, not when they had just stolen a priceless diamond. Particularly because as much as he loved his adopted brother, Ryuji was not very good at lying. With a turn of the key the door locked behind him and he set out on his slow walk towards the station to head to Untouchable in Shibuya.

Even at this hour, the train was packed. There wasn’t a single place to sit as usual, but at this point Ren was used to have to handle a packed environment in a stressful situation. He still couldn’t get himself to stop glancing at every corner after a police ambush that would never come, but a little paranoia never hurt anyone in the thieving business.

Particularly when your fence for stolen goods is an ex-yakuza who owns a survival game hobby store. Who sells your products via his very much not ex-yakuza contacts. But as much as it bothered him to begin with, Iwai himself was a good man at heart and while Ren would most likely never trust his contacts, he could absolutely trust Iwai.

That kind of trust was hard to find these days, harder still when you were a wanted criminal. The elite had eyes everywhere, and when you’re on a righteous mission of upheaval you need trustworthy confidants. Luckily, that was one of Ren’s many talents.

But avoiding nearly running into the police officer that had nearly caught him only 14 hours earlier in the day? No, no that wasn’t part of his portfolio now.

Because standing there, nursing her soaked hairdo in the walkway above Shibuya Station was Makoto Niijima in full police officer uniform.

He just hoped that she hadn’t seen him. He had gotten cocky when they met at the museum, and shown her too much of himself. Here was hoping that practicing the boyish voice would pay off if she did notice him. And if it wouldn’t, that Futaba and Ryuji would be ready to spring into action when they noticed he hadn’t come back on time. They were probably both waiting with baited breath, worried sick already.

* * *

“What the hell was with that officer, though?” Ryuji wondered. “Why’d Ren hit on her like that?”

“Hey, hey Ryuji.”

“I mean, he knows better than any of us that he was playing with fire. I mean for real, he could have gotten everything to fall apart if it hadn’t worked.”

“Ryuji. Ryuji. Look at me.”

“What?”

“Bitch.”

* * *

Ren breathed a silent sigh of relief when Niijima walked right past him towards the station, he felt like he had spontaneously just aged a couple of years right then and there. Allowing himself to let out an actual, loud sigh of relief to get rid of the grey hairs he must surely have just gained he pushed his glasses into place and headed for Untouchable.

The weather was still just awful - part of him felt bad for Niijima having to walk home like that, but he supposed that it wasn’t any of his business what went on in her life.

The streets of Shibuya were crowded as ever, even in the torrential downpour. Luckily Ren could just keep his umbrella up and his head down and nobody would look twice at him when he finally broke free of the stream of people as he entered the alleyway where the survival game shop “Untouchable” was located.

The shop itself was quiet and empty, with survival game enthusiasts being few and far between. That, and Iwai had a talent for scaring the weak-willed away. But for someone like Ren, Iwai was the perfect middle-man.

“Hey,” Iwai called out once he noticed a new customer. “Shit, you look like a drowned cat.”

“Thanks, you too,” Ren replied without missing a beat. “Came as fast as I could.”

“I can tell,” Iwai replied, punctuating is statement by crushing the lollipop in his mouth. “So I got some good news and some bad. What first?”

“Bad, please,” Ren said as he placed his umbrella up against a wall and pulled his hoodie back. Iwai gave a bemused huff in response.

“Suit yourself. Your buyer isn’t offering much.”

“Shame. And the good?”

“Well, you have a buyer. He’s willing because he’s got a vendetta towards the guy you stole the diamond from.” Ren’s eyebrow perked up, his interest piqued.

“Madarame?”

“I guess that’s him, yeah. And… he’s willing to jack up the price if you can offer him something else.” Now, Ren was actively leaning forwards.

“Like what?” Iwai couldn’t help but smirk when he saw the confident expression appear on Ren’s face.

“Oh you’re gonna like this one…”

* * *

Following the Regent Diamond heist, Futaba kindly did herself some research on the mastermind behind the art theft operation we so rudely interrupted. The legendary omnidisciplinary painter and art lover, Ichiryusai Madarame.

Ichiryusai makes a point of presenting his origins as humble and inspiring to the normal person with artistic dreams, and there’s a truth to that - but what he did to achieve his status is something he’s been sure to keep hidden.

Being born into a poor family, Ichiryusai always had a passion for the arts and strove to stand alongside them since the beginning of his adulthood - only he was never as successful as he wanted to be. Desperation and ambition led him to stealing the _Sayuri_ from one of his later apprentices… after supposedly letting her die from a seizure. A few touch-ups and voila, a masterpiece was revealed.

The attention, wealth and prestige that the _Sayuri_ gave him kindled a fire inside the old man’s heart, and ever since then he’s been covertly responsible for some of the greatest art thefts of the modern day, particularly the yet-to-be-published art of his apprentices. His stolen art catapulted him to artistic stardom, as like a master of all forms of japanese art… built on the broken dreams of his apprentices.

These days, the Master of Japanese Arts is still going strong, with his most recent exhibition being slated to draw in important figures from all over Japan to behold his timeless masterpiece. All manner of people… including us.

And the _Sayuri_ will be leaving with us.

**_THE PHANTOM THIEVES IN…_ **

**_Thief of the Seasons_ **


	3. Thief of the Seasons: The Setup

It was an early morning at Leblanc. The cafe itself was closed, but the chic retro style of its interior belied the absolute pandemonium that was the attic. Three sleeping bags on one lousy mattress, a table that housed Futaba’s utter monster of a desktop, a shelf filled with Ryuji’s mangas and Futaba’s paraphernalia from various games and anime and other odd things that they still hadn’t organized after Sojiro’s old house was sold off.

The floor itself was a mess of schematics and tools. On it was a schematic of an enormous building - a rented venue meant to temporarily display the _Sayuri_ amongst other of Madarame’s stolen works. As frugal as Madarame liked to portray himself as, the venue was positively extravagant. It was less an exhibition and more a ball than anything else, with important figures from all over Japan set to attend. Even the Prime Minister himself was going to attend, of all people.

Ryuji couldn’t help but whistle in amazement. “Woah. This whole thing is for real. They’ve not spared a single yen.”

“There’s that taxpayer money at work,” Futaba snarked in response as Ren grabbed a marker and started to draw circles on the schematic itself. “Okay. I think I see a way this can work. Even at an ostentatious venue like this there’s no way they’re going to put the _Sayuri_ somewhere within easy reach of the guests. So that leaves them with only three different places to place it. They’re either going to let guests in a few at a time in the backroom here,” Ren said, marking off the small back room and drawing two lines. “That has only two entrances, front and ceiling.”

“Easy,” Futaba boasted, and Ren gave her an affectionate head rub. “Their second option is this, the main balcony. It’s in full view of the guests but out of reach. The balcony itself is open, but very easily filled up with security guards. That’ll be a little more tricky, but the right kind of distraction can do the job.”

“And the last?” Ryuji inquired, holding back an involuntary yawn.

“That’d be here, in one of the siderooms. Unlike the other, this one has only one entrance, has no easy access beyond the door inside and is very easily reached from the main ballroom. My money is on there, because it’s the only place where we can’t steal it from if it’s placed there.”

“So we steal it in advance, yeah?” Ryuji inquired, and Futaba nodded. “According to the program, the gallery is set to unveil the painting on the exhibition’s third day. There’s no way they’re going to have it in place before then - by then it’ll be in the security vault here,” Futaba put her finger on the map, and Ren circled it. “Of course, we don’t know their schedule just yet, and we also need to see what the venue looks like in person.”

“But effin’ how? This is a big deal, no way they’re gonna hand out invitations to punks like us.”

“To common people like us? No, definitely not. But to the press?...” Ren let the gravity of his statement float in the air for a while, waiting for his two adoptive siblings to catch on. “Oh. Oh! Ooooohhh, I getcha!” Ryuji’s confused expression turned into a big grin the moment he realized what Ren was talking about, but Futaba remained confused. “What? Don’t play the pronoun game with me here Ren,” she huffed.

“You two look over the schematics a bit more. I’ve gotta give a good friend a call.”

* * *

“What in the world did we do to you to deserve this?!” was the first words out of Police Officer Sadayo Kawakami’s mouth when Makoto made the announcement to the unit.

“Please, Kawakami, I’m not-”

“You know that they’ve been uncaught for over four years now, right? Tokyo’s finest have tried catching these guys for four years, and now they’re handing it over to _us?!”_

As Kawakami continued to vent, her partner in anti-crime, Police Officer Yuuki Mishima let out a long-suffering sigh. “What she means to say i-is that if they couldn’t do it, why can we?”

Makoto had stayed up all night preparing a speech for her unit of four women and one very timid man. Of how they were going to succeed where everyone else had failed. Filled with inspirational phrases and calls to duty. The words were there, and all Makoto had to do to reassure her unit was to recite them.

Of course, this was made a little complicated by the fact that Makoto was so tired and exhausted that she could barely keep her eyes fully open. So instead what she said was an exhausted sigh and a simple admittal of “I don’t know.”

“Ma’am, with all due respect, we will need a plan,” Police Officer Togo Hifumi spoke up in her soft voice. Unlike Kawakami, who was loud and brash all the time, Hifumi was mostly quiet and gentle until she got worked up. Then she could out-shout a jet engine.

“Correct. We will,” Makoto said, involuntarily gritting her teeth together. “And I have one. Recently I nearly caught their leader, the Joker, in one of Ichiryusai Madarame’s private museums.”

“Oh!” The voice of the ever excitable Officer Ann Takamaki rung out, immediately getting up. “I saw that on the news last night!” Makoto thanked her lucky stars that nobody seemed to notice how embarrassed she felt about it. While the news report hadn’t been flattering in the slightest, recalling the event still caused a deep feeling of shame to well up inside her.

“They left behind one of their usual calling cards following the crime,” Takamaki’s partner, Officer Shiho Suzui added. “It accused Madarame of art theft.”

“That’s very damn rich,” Kawakami groaned. “Coming from the thieves who just stole one of the world’s most valuable diamonds. The nerve of the bastards…”

“Focus, please,” Makoto coughed to regain her focus, and to quiet down any talk of her encounter with the Joker. “Hence it’s my theory that the Thieves intend to go after Madarame again. The upcoming exhibition of the _Sayuri_ is too big for them to ignore. They can’t not go after it, if they intend to expose Madarame of his supposed crimes.”

When Kawakami didn’t sneer something in response, poor Mishima let out a relieved sigh. “A valid strategy,” Hifumi added, “-but it is unlikely that we will be allowed access to the exhibition.”

“It’s better than nothing,” Kawakami immediately spoke up in defense of Makoto’s theory. Kawakami in a nutshell. Cynical but she was doing her best anyway. Even in the face of this monstrous task, Makoto allowed herself to feel just a little proud about who she had the privilege to work with.

“I mean, yeah,” Takamaki added. “It’s worth a shot to ask, right? Besides, wouldn’t the old man be more at ease if Tokyo’s finest was there and ready to respond?” Her statement was quickly followed by a “damn right” from Suzui, and the rest of the room echoed their sentiment.

“I’m going to go make a call to the Chief Inspector,” Makoto declared. “I’m going to formally announce our plan of action, and then I intend to call the exhibit arranger to make our goal known. _And then, we catch the Phantom Thieves!”_

* * *

_“Crossroads, Lala-chan speaking.”_

_“Of course she’s here, darling. She always is.”_

_“I’ll put her on for you.”_

_(rustling)_

_“Ohya Ichiko speaking, who is this?”_

_“Cut to it, please. What do you need?”_

_“Okay… uh huh… really?”_

_“You’re not being serious, are you?”_

_“Oh for the love of- alright. But you owe me something expensive. Very expensive.”_

_“Yes, Kayo’s doing fine. Thank you for asking.”_

_“Right, see you there.”_

_“Thanks, you too.”_

* * *

Makoto loved every single member of her six-person unit, and if it were up to her she would be working with them for the rest of her life. They were all brave, intelligent and dedicated police officers who did the badge honor.

Of course, what she wouldn’t say to them was that handling them was like working at a kindergarten sometimes. Kawakami needed someone like Mishima around her constantly lest she start wrestling down a patron at the museum if they mentioned her age.

Takamaki was even worse. As passionate as she was, she was way, _way_ too damn excitable and got a lot of wild ideas very quickly. Good thing Suzui was there to give the important friendly advice of “you’re stupid, Takamaki.”

Hence, she worked with the one remaining available sane person in the unit - Hifumi. When the situation wasn’t tense or she wasn’t very, very into something she was calm and collected. Makoto thanked her lucky stars for small blessings.

With Kawakami and Mishima being off for looking through the patrons in order to try and spot anyone acting suspiciously and the other pair off for checking the paintings, Makoto and Hifumi were going to try and find the Master Artist himself.

Which, as it turned out, wasn’t that hard. The tell-tale look of a TV audio recording stick was very obvious even in a venue like this. As the two police officers got closer, Makoto’s deduction was confirmed - a journalist with a following TV crew were interviewing the Master Artist himself.

“Just another moment, Madarame sir,” the bowl-cut journalist declared as her following crew of three were making the final adjustments. The white-haired cameraman - young but clearly very muscular from the way he was holding the camera with no issues whatsoever did a slight adjustment of the lens, while a short blonde-haired girl assisted the brown-haired young man in glasses with the audio recording stick - experimentally moving it slightly up and down until he got a thumbs-up from the cameraman.

“Alright, Ohya! Starting in three… two… one!” And a second after one, the short girl sharply pointed towards the two, and took that as her signal.

“Good evening! I’m reporter Ichiko Ohya, here with Ichiryusai Madarame, the omnidisciplinary Master Artist himself, and he has graciously allowed us a peek inside his newest and most exciting exhibition!” Even from this far away, Makoto felt a chill just from the presence of the press. As if her reprimand from the Chief Inspector wasn’t enough, the press had sought her out as well because someone couldn’t keep their mouth shut around the press.

She’d been terrified of anything slipping out to them. Imagine if the press got wind of what happened between her and the Joker - her entire career would go up in smoke because that thief forced himself on her.

Hifumi said nothing, but made a mental note of how her senior officer shuddered at the sight of the journalist and her camera crew.

“Please,” Madarame said with a soft tone of voice. “I am but a simple painter amongst the countless masters from old history. I merely stand on the shoulders of giants.”

“So humble!” Ohya practically squeed. “I never thought I would hear the painter of the _Sayuri_ be so modest about his own achievements. Wouldn’t you say that a master artist like you deserves to be proud of his own work?”

“Vanity never suited me,” Madarame replied glibly. “But I am grateful to see that my finest piece was allowed a viewing here at this venue. I only think it a shame that the _Sayuri_ was not more accessible to the common man. Everyone should have the chance to see it.”

“Speaking of the _Sayuri_ ,” Ohya interjected, neatly guiding the conversation like an expert journalist, “-are you not nervous that your greatest artwork might be stolen? With the Phantom Thieves on the rise, is this not quite the risk?”

“You are correct,” Madarame said, his words measured carefully. “But I would not allow such a possibility to rob the world the chance of seeing something beautiful. And if they do see this, I must implore them not to carry out their theft.”

“I see,” Ohya’s reply came a second or two later, with Ohya making a show out of looking deep in thought. “Thank you very much for your time, Madarame sir.” The master artist simply gave the journalist a soft smile and the words “-it was my pleasure. Please do feel free to look around. Whilst you might have to forego the _Sayuri_ , perhaps some of my other works might inspire you.”

“Thank you so much,” Ohya replied, bowing. “I won’t take up more of your time. Good day.” Ohya immediately turned towards the pint-sized director, who replied with another thumbs-up gesture. Makoto took this as her cue and walked over to the small group of five after Madarame made his leave. “Senior Officer Niijima Makoto,” she announced, pulling out her badge. “-and this is Officer Togo Hifumi. We’d like to see your identification, please.”

The young director jumped over towards the brown-haired young man with glasses holding up the audio recording stick, who folded it back together and the cameraman lowered the massive monstrosity he was carrying. Before anything else happened, Ohya stepped in. “Of course! I’m Ichiko Ohya from the Tokyo Metropolitan Daily, and these are my assistants,” Ohya said, handing over four sets of press passes.

Makoto gave the names a quick scan - Ichiko Ohya, Miyano Mamoru, Kurusu Akira and Yuuki Aoi. Dedicating them to memory, Makoto promptly handed them over to Hifumi to check them over. “Apologies for the interruption, miss.”

“Oh, no problem. We were just done anyways,” Ohya replied, playing off Makoto’s sudden interruption. “Besides, who am I to question the police about doing their job? Not when the Phantom Thieves are about, that’s for sure.”

“Agreed,” Makoto replied curtly to mask her own unease about the topic of the Phantom Thieves in proximity of the press. And only to make life easier for her, Hifumi took that moment to hand the four press passes back to Ohya with a short “They’re real.”

“That’ll be all. Enjoy the rest of the exhibit,” Makoto said with that practiced tone of finality she’d learned from her sister to make sure that Ohya was not going to start interviewing her out of the blue. Motioning for Hifumi to follow, Makoto immediately turned tail and walked away.

Unlucky for her. If she’d stayed, she might have seen the Phantom Thieves instead of a camera crew.

* * *

“Breathe, Futaba,” Ren had to say in a hushed voice, because Futaba looked like she was about to have a heart attack. Futaba only replied with a whimper, and Ren realized that this was a catastrophic emergency.

“Ohya, go on with Ryuji. I’m gonna calm Futaba down.” Ohya answered with nothing but a small nod and a smile before grabbing Ryuji by the hand and beginning to lead him slowly through the gallery.

Grabbing his duffel bag, Ren took Futaba’s hand in his and immediately aimed for the restroom. Deciding that karma could have his way with him for what he was about to do later, he immediately led Futaba into the handicap restroom.

He’d barely locked the door before Futaba rushed into his arms and nestled her head into his chest. “This is a disaster,” she breathed.

Ren gave his adoptive little sister a soft, comforting hug. “It’s okay. You are doing great.”

“No I’m not. I reacted weirdly, the cop must have seen something, she’s onto us, she’s gonna-”

Ren had to use his secret weapon in a situation this catastrophically dire.

So he slowly unzipped the bag, and…

A bundle of black and white fur leapt into Futaba’s arms.

“Morgana!” Futaba exclaimed in surprise, having been caught completely off-guard.

Not that she minded, as she ran her hands through Morgana’s soft kitty fur. The therapy cat purred in response, and Futaba cooed in pure, innocent joy.

A _cat-astrophic_ emergency indeed.

Whilst Futaba was busy with her cuddling session, Morgana gave Ren a slight look. Ren mouthed the words “fatty tuna” and Morgana purred back before returning his focus onto Futaba.

Ren pulled out his phone in one swift, elegant motion and typed the words “ORACLE OK. C U SOON” for maximum expedience and returned his attention to Futaba. “You brought him,” Futaba moaned, barely able to talk over her absolute enjoyment of her beloved therapy cat. “You didn’t think I was going to just leave him behind at home, did you?” Ren replied with a bit of a smirk.

“Smart-aleck,” Futaba spat back without any bite as Morgana meowed. “Someone has to be,” Ren retorted. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah,” Futaba replied whilst giving Morgana a gentle squeeze. “I think I can do this now.” The moment Ren heard that he reached out for Morgana, but Futaba refused. “Just a little longer.”

And a little longer Ren did give her, allowing Futaba to close her eyes and sink down onto the floor, Morgana still in her arms shifting ever so slightly. But all good things have to come to an end, and Futaba eventually reluctantly allowed Morgana to hop out of her arms. Ren gently wrapped his arms around the cat and slowly lowered him back into the bag, giving him a little scratch behind the ears to go with it.

“One second,” Futaba suddenly announced and reached for Ren’s head. Ren acquiesced and let his little sister fix his wig.

The moment Ren came back out from the restroom with Futaba and the cat-in-a-bag, they made their way calmly towards Ryuji and Ohya who were in the middle of the venue itself, and not a police officer in sight. Strangely, the two weren’t moving. They were stock-still, staring at an empty part of wall in central view of the whole crowd… wait.

“Is that the place?” Ren said in a hushed voice just loud enough for Ryuji to hear without having to actively look like he was listening, but quiet enough to be drowned out by anyone else. Ryuji nodded in reply, and Ren’s thoughts began working a mile a minute.

_It’s right in front of the backroom, it’s in direct view of everyone and it’s too far away from everything else to be covered by security overlap. They couldn’t have made it any easier to steal outside just gift-wrapping it with a tag saying “To the Phantom Thieves” on it._

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Futaba said with a big, dumb grin on her face. “Yup,” Ren replied curtly before turning over towards Ryuji who immediately voiced his observations. “They seem undermanned, and their patrol routes are completely out of whack. It’s like they’re not even trying to keep everything under watch, Ren.” Ryuji’s got the same kind of dumb grin on his face. “We’re gonna rob this asshole blind no sweat!”

“Yeah,” Ren replies as the group continues making note of absolutely everything. But Ren couldn’t muster up the same kind of enthusiasm. Something was bothering him, but he had no idea what. “I just don’t get why.”

“What do you mean, Renren?” Ryuji was confused now. He thought Ren would be ecstatic like Futaba and he to see that the job would be this simple. “I mean that this doesn’t make sense. Come on. We’re leaving-” and like that, Ren walked slap-dash right into another person with a loud ‘whump’.

“Sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was-” “My sincerest apologies, I was-” the two young men both began to say, but stopped when they realized that they were talking over each other. With an echoed “Sorry,” that only made them both even more embarrassed, Ren did his best to shut up to at least let this situation play out.

“As I said, apologies. I was just going to ask you to leave, but it seems that that was not necessary.” The boy’s voice was very prim and proper, a very even and polite tone. “It’s fine,” Ren croaked. “We were just-”

“Hold it for just a moment,” Ohya chose this instant to interrupt. Ryuji mouthed her a ‘what-the-hell’ as she pushed him to the side to approach the boy, and Ohya dutifully ignored him. “You’re Yusuke Kitagawa, correct? The only remaining apprentice of Madarame?” The moment Ohya finished her sentence, Yusuke’s face twisted into a displeased grimace.

“Do not even bother. Sensei and I have suffered the paparazzi’s relentless barrage of baseless accusations for years on end. You are no different.” Yusuke’s earlier veneer of politeness was now tempered with a clearly held-back sense of anger and frustration, but Ren had to give him credit for how well he stayed composed.

“I suppose you’re right,” Ohya began. “Letting him steal your art for his own would numb you to that kind of questioning over time, wouldn’t it?”

Yusuke’s paint-covered hands were practically shaking at this point. “Leave this venue at once, and take your associates with you. Otherwise I shall summon security.”

“Just saying,” Ohya retorted. “He’s thrown away everyone else. How long until he throws you away as well?” And with that, Ohya turned tail and started to head towards the exit. Ren let out an exasperated sigh. This was the cost of being able to have a reporter at his beck and call, he supposed. “I’m really sorry about that,” he said in an attempt to assuage the now-furious Yusuke. “She’s impossible about things like that.”

“I can tell,” Yusuke replied. “Nevertheless, I will have to ask you to leave. Apologies.”

“It’s fine. You’re a good person, Kitagawa.” Ren motioned for Ryuji and Futaba to head for the exit, but Ren would take a moment to try and talk sense into Kitagawa. “It’s a shame I never got to see the _Sayuri_ for myself.”

“I understand. The _Sayuri_ was what had me seek out Madarame, you know. It inspired me to be a painter,” Suddenly, Yusuke’s earlier foul mood was gone. It was like the _Sayuri_ has a calming effect on him.

“I think that that’s what your mother would have wanted it to,” Ren suddenly said without warning. The look of shock on Yusuke’s face was something Ren would have wanted dedicated to film if it wasn’t about something so deeply personal. Yusuke wanted to say something, he was clearly _trying to,_ but there were no words for what Ren was implying.

“I’m sorry that the truth hurts,” Ren admitted before turning to leave himself, leaving Yusuke behind in a mess of confused emotions that the artistic prodigy had no idea what to do with.

“What a pain in the ass she is,” Ryuji groaned as Ohya made her goodbyes and waved around a notebook in which was most likely the notes of the big scoop she was going to write the day after their heist. “Sometimes I really do wish that we didn’t have to deal with her.”

“You and me both, brother,” Ren groaned. “Let’s head home.”

“Still, there’s one silver lining,” Futaba said in an attempt to cheer the now beaten-down Ren. “The heist is going to be the easiest thing ever. I mean, lax security and hiring the one cop who we know Ren can charm his way around? It’s like they want us to steal it.”

“Yeah,” Ren admitted with a smile. “It’s like they… want us to…” Ren froze, right there in the street. “They want us to steal it.”

“What?” Ryuji was now completely confused, and Futaba had entirely lost the plot. “What are you saying?”

Ren had to resist the urge to slap his hand on his forehead. “We’re heading home. Now.”


	4. Thief of the Seasons: The Plan

If there was one thing he hated more than the so-called Phantom Thieves, it was having to work with someone like Madarame. Whilst his art trade was an effective method of money-laundering, the price of his services were always skyrocketing.

The vain old man had demanded the finest venue in Tokyo for his masterpiece, and he wanted to be instrumental in catching the Phantom Thieves. And not even by simply catching them in the act, no he insisted on a more complicated scheme.

At least he’d been wise enough to put up some fall guys for the plan. Or fall girls, he should say. Makoto Niijima and her worthless unit would be an excellent scapegoat, and it would only help destroy Sae Niijima’s credibility. Three birds with one stone, efficiency really was a fantastic trait.

He almost felt bad about how hard both the Thieves and the police were being played. But if they were stupid enough to fall into it then they deserved it. There was no room for fools in the modern Japan; only the intelligent, cunning and the ambitious. And he was all three, while they were none.

But a part of him did hope that soon he’d find an excuse to off the old man. The cost was beginning to slowly outweigh the benefit, and he hated having that kind of hole in his pocket.

Perhaps he’d need to go the same way as the elder Niijimas did.

Time would tell.

* * *

“We have a really big problem,” was the first thing Ren said the moment the three adoptive siblings arrived home to Cafe Leblanc. There was no questioning or any attempt to brush it off on Ryuji’s or Futaba’s part, they could immediately tell by Ren’s cadence that he was being deadly serious.

“It’s a setup. The whole exhibition is a trap meant to catch us by presenting us with a target so juicy on a silver platter that there’s no way we could ever resist. Why else put the  _ Sayuri _ in the one place it would be by far the easiest for us to steal it from?”

The gravity of Ren’s theory made their air thick and heavy inside the closed cafe. The only sound was the breathing of three people. Ren himself took a deep breath and opened the bag to let Morgana out. Futaba’s therapy cat immediately nestled into the arms of the free-of-disguise Futaba, but there came no happy sound from the reclusive young girl this time. Ryuji looked tense, like he was ready for a fight. Ren himself was tapping his his right index finger against his left upper arm, before finally resolving to say what had to be said.

“We’re going to make them regret trying this kind of underhanded tactic. No way are we folding to these people.”

“Ren, bro, not to doubt you man,” Ryuji said, running the palm of his hand across his face in muted frustration. “-but how? How are we going to reverse-catch-in-the-act the guys who want to catch us in the act?”

Ren’s earlier enthusiasm started to taper out, giving way to his own sense of frustration with the matter at hand. “I don’t know. Even if this is a setup, we still don’t know how they intend to catch us.”

“And if it’s a setup, why bother bringing in the one police officer who was the closest to ever catching us?” Futaba inquired. “It doesn’t match up with it being such an obvious target.”

“For real,” Ryuji added. “If we’re being played, this is one weird friggin’ trap. One I dunno how we’re supposed to handle.”

Ren groaned in frustration, it all being too much for him. Why would they bring in Makoto Niijima? She was probably the only cop in Tokyo that wasn’t on the take, there was no way she would let them make off with the  _ Sayuri _ without her at least trying to take him down with her service revolver.

She was just going to end up taking the fall for the theft-

Wait.

Ren suddenly had an idea, and a very smug grin was starting to spread its way across his face.

For a moment, neither Futaba or Ryuji understood why Ren was suddenly so pleased with himself. Then Futaba caught it. “Ren. Ren, no.”

Judging by Futaba’s almost  _ disgusted _ tone, Ryuji caught on as well. “You sly dog. You absolute madman.”

“Phantom Thieves,” Ren extended his arms in turn with his bold declaration just to lend himself some extra weight to his words. “-we’re going to help the police catch an art thief.”

“I am not helping you pull off a reverse heist just so you can flirt with a policewoman, Ren.” Futaba’s reply was rapid and terse, her tone laced with disgust. Ryuji took a moment to cough in an attempt to play wingman. “Actually, Futaba, it’s police officer. I saw them mention something like that on TV yesterday, it’s to not make any assumptions with the term or something.”

“FINE,” Futaba practically growled. “I am not helping you pull off a reverse heist just so you can flirt with a policewoman officer, Ren.”

Ren’s reply to that was simple. As Futaba closed her eyes in frustration, Ren put his hand on the head of his adoptive little sister and gave her a gentle rub.

“Yes, yes you are.”

“Yeah, I am. How are you that good at convincing me?”

“Must be a big brother thing. Now get ready, because I have a  _ really _ bad idea.”

* * *

“Senior Officer, are you okay?”

Makoto had to suppress a jump when Hifumi said that sentence while on their way back in the squad car.

“Huh?” Makoto felt her cheeks redden just a little in embarrassment. She’d been doing her absolute best to keep a lid on how this whole Phantom Thieves business was affecting her, and she thought she’d managed to pull it off.

Having Hifumi just see through her like that was worrying. Nevertheless, she needed to play it off. Brush off the accusation.

“I’m fine. Just so much has happened the past week, it’s a little hard to keep track of.” Makoto’s words were stern and to the point like she always was, but it was her word choice that bothered Hifumi.

For a whole thirty seconds there was no talking at all in the squad car, a pregnant silence hanging thick in the air between the two.

“I see,” Hifumi conceded. “Perhaps you could use a cup of coffee, then?”

“Absolutely. I’ll get one on the way home,” Makoto wasn’t really going to, but she couldn’t let Hifumi start doubting her fellow police officer - so she played along.

“No, not one of those machine cups, Makoto. I mean a  _ proper _ cup of coffee.”

Makoto’s ears perked up. “What do you mean?”

“You go past Yongen on your way home, right? There’s a cafe there, not far from the station called Leblanc. They make very good coffee and curry.”

Makoto could feel her mouth water the moment Hifumi mentioned curry. She hadn’t eaten anything all day and by now she was thanking her lucky stars that her stomach wasn’t warbling.

She couldn’t break character, not here and certainly not now. She was in enough hot water already.

“Maybe,” she said, making sure not to commit herself to something. “I’ll swing by it when I happen to have time.”

The rest of the car ride back to the station was very quiet, with Makoto doing her absolute best to find the license plates of the cars in front of them very interesting as to avoid any pointed glances Hifumi might shoot her.

The two were the last to arrive back at the precinct - Takamaki and Suzui had already arrived, and Kawakami had just gotten out of the squad car, grumpy as usual, with Mishima trying his best to calm the grouchy woman down.

“Please take better care of yourself,” Hifumi managed to croak out before Makoto opened the door and set about putting her Senior Officer face back on.

The loud tap-tapping of her shoes against the stairs outside the precinct helped mask her exhausted sigh.

At least going over the day’s findings with the rest of the squad would help get her mind off of everything, she hoped.

It did not.

For all the excitement she’d managed to put into her squad yesterday, it just hadn’t translated into anything worthwhile. If the Phantom Thieves really had been there, then they’d managed to slip right under the noses of the entire squad.

It was just one big mess of socialites, journalists and art critics. Not to mention that Kawakami hadn’t gotten any less grouchy and had started saying that they’d need to watch the socialites more closely. When Makoto asked what kind of suspicious behavior she’d seen, she clammed up immediately.

Takamaki or Suzui hadn’t seen anything either. The most suspicious thing they saw was an art critic who got weirdly into his examining of the art pieces on display, and they’d handled that quickly.

Resisting the urge to bury her head in her hands after several hours’ worth of discussion over findings that led nowhere, Makoto was about to contemplate giving up entirely - when something unexpected happened.

A report of a robbery. Or more notably - a robbery at the humble shack that was the home for the Master Artist himself.

* * *

Parked in an alley in Shibuya was the unmarked Phan-Van, Ryuji’s pride and joy. In the driver’s seat sat Ryuji, keeping a lazy eye out just in case the alleyway wasn’t enough cover. In the passenger’s seat was Futaba and her laptop and headset, listening in on several police channels.

And in the back was Ren, slipping on his red gloves in full Phantom Thief outfit. After the gloves were on, he grabbed the collar of his trenchcoat and lifted it up to his mouth. “Testing, 1-2-3,” he said, causing Futaba to nearly topple over.

“Reeeen! Warn me before you do that!” Futaba’s tone was less actually angry and more of the usual bratty little-sister she’d use to try and keep her adoptive big brother in line. If her big brother was anyone other than Joker, the infamous leader of the Phantom Thieves, it might’ve worked too.

Joker gave his adoptive little sister the signature smirk before opening the swing doors in the back in one fell swoop for the sake of being dramatic - but before Ryuji could yell at him, he was already gone.

The security Madarame had in his shack was laughable. All Joker had to do to get inside was to wrench a window open and he was set. Not even an anti-theft alarm - and that’s why Joker was certain that Madarame was hiding something important here. Madarame had gone out of his way to have nothing in the way of security in the slightest - and to an outsider, it really did seem like all he had was the humble shack and its paintings.

But to a thief like Joker, there was no more enticing target. Giving Futaba a curt “I’m in,” before beginning to search the house. At first, Joker did find nothing at all. Only two bedrooms, a few ateliers, half-finished paintings. Nothing worthwhile.

But on the second floor? A big, ornate door with one hell of a lock. Joker felt like it was Christmas morning as he pulled out a pick and performed his magic. A minute passed and the lock fell, and Joker left the broken lockpick there - he was going to see what Madarame did about this door when the police came.

Pushing the door gently open, Ren’s eyes narrowed to get a better look at his surroundings - and what he saw made him both smile and curse.

Rows up rows of paintings - all of them the same. All of them copies of the  _ Sayuri. _ All immaculate recreations, and a single light shining down upon an empty atelier. There was no doubt about what would be on that, if it hadn’t been moved away for the exhibition.

“Madarame’s got a secret room. I’m seeing a lot of copies of the painting. Enough to sell as souvenirs and then some,” Joker relayed, and Futaba let out a disgusted hiss in response.  _ “So that’s his plan, huh? Make us stealing a copy of the Sayuri a huge PR stunt for himself, and then let him sell copies of it on the black market while making people think it’s the original, which he can then use to make infinite copies! That vainglorious piece of work!” _

“And drive more and more aspiring artists into his arms to leech artworks and ideas from,” Joker added. “We’re going to ruin this monster, Oracle. Count on it.”

_ “We better,” _ she said with an almost audible pout.  _ “Hurry on back, we need to form a plan from this,” _

For almost half a minute, Joker stood there saying nothing.

“I’m going to pocket a copy,” Joker suddenly replied, pulling a single copy out from the shelves and hefting it under his arm. “For safekeeping.”

_ “Alright, just-” _ Oracle’s sentence just suddenly stopped with no warning whatsoever.

“Oracle? Oracle, what’s going on?”

_ “Joker, Kitagawa just passed by us! He’s going to catch you in the act! Hurry out!” _

For a moment, Joker was about to bolt, about to rush out of the shack and leave behind only the evidence that a Phantom Thief was here.

But then he had an idea. “Oracle, tell Skull to be ready for a quick getaway. I have a plan.”   
  
_ “A plan?! For what?!” _

“Just trust me on this.”

Feeling his belt, he counted himself lucky to be carrying his handgun - courtesy of Iwai. Kitagawa could prove to be a useful witness, if everything played out the way he wanted it to. Quickly ducking behind a door, Joker bided his time and waited for Yusuke to come home.

The first thought that popped into Joker’s head when he saw Yusuke step in through the door was how thin the young artist was.  _ Does he even eat? _

Of course, the open window was obvious - and it presented Joker with the perfect opportunity. Making sure to step in sync with Kitagawa to mask his own footsteps, the only chance the young artist would have to realize that a Phantom Thief was right behind him was when he felt a gun barrel dig into the back of his head as he reached for the window.

There was a pregnant silence, a few seconds of absolutely no movement or sound.

“If you are looking for money, I’m afraid you will be disappointed,” Kitagawa said, his voice only wavering ever so slightly. “And the  _ Sayuri _ is not here. You will not steal it.”

“Of course not,” Joker replied. “I didn’t become Most Wanted by being foolish. Back away from the window.”

Yusuke did as ordered.

“Do as I say, when I say so. Any sudden movements, anything I don’t like?” For emphasis, Joker cocked the hammer of his Desert Eagle. “And Madarame will be spending money on new varnishing to get the brain matter out.”

“You wouldn’t shoot me,” Kitagawa replied. “Correct,” Joker replied. “So don’t  _ make me. _ Now turn 180 degrees with me.”

Joker led Yusuke very, very slowly through the house at gunpoint. It was mostly smooth sailing, but the stairs made every single movement Yusuke made look like he was about to try something - and Joker was glad he still had the safety on.

Finally, once they got to the door - Joker nearly allowed himself a sigh of relief. “Do you see that door? Do you know it?”

“Yes,” Kitagawa said, apprehensive. “But Madarame has been most insistent that I do not see what is inside.”

“Well, he’s not here. So step inside,” Joker ordered. When Yusuke didn’t move, Joker let out an annoyed grunt. “Didn’t you hear me?  _ Step. Inside.” _

“I will not betray my Sensei’s trust.”

“That’s funny,” Joker said, completely done with Yusuke for today. “He’s already betrayed yours.” Joker put his boot on Yusuke’s back and kicked him in the back to push him right inside.

Yusuke fell forwards with a loud cry of surprise and pain into the room, with Joker slowly trotting in after him and stopping in the doorway - to make sure that Yusuke didn’t go anywhere.

Yusuke thought the world of his Sensei. Madarame had raised him, he had introduced him to art, he was giving Yusuke every bit of support he could give - there was nothing that Yusuke wouldn’t give for him.

He would gladly go without food for a day if it meant honing his craft and making Madarame proud. He would gladly allow him to publish his own works under his name because he would have never made them had it not been for Sensei.

Sensei was everything to him.

So why, why did it sting so much when he saw all the forgeries of the  _ Sayuri? _ Even worse, that all these forgeries carried with them none of the heart or soul of the painting that had inspired him to become an artist?

Like they had been forged by an imitator, by someone who could have never made the original themselves…

Yusuke let out an involuntary groan of disgust and averted his eyes from the forgeries surrounding him. Joker leaned up against the doorframe, turning his head to the left towards the young painter.

“It weirded me out too. Why oh why would Ichiryusai Madarame, the Master of Japanese Arts who had mastered all forms and styles of japanese art have a room full of copies of his greatest work?” Joker let the insinuation do its work, but Yusuke was still resisting. Better to stab this dagger of truth in a little deeper.

“They could have fooled me. If I hadn’t seen forgery techniques before, I could never tell that these weren’t the real thing. And I don’t think a buyer could tell either.”

“You’re lying!” Yusuke cried out, but even that was half-hearted.

“You’re right,” Joker replied. “I might just be lying. I’m sure that all this is just a big misunderstanding, that’s what you’re thinking right now, isn’t it?”

Yusuke let out a huff of air and turned away his face from the Phantom Thief, but said nothing. Joker wanted to push the knife in deeper, but a part of him felt bad for what he was putting the young artist through.

“Maybe it is,” Joker mused before directing his silver eyes directly at Yusuke, giving him the most stern glare he could possibly muster. “Call the police. Your ‘Sensei’ should come running. Then you can ask him yourself.”

When Yusuke heard the Joker running, he got to his feet as quickly as he could and pulled out his phone, ready to make the call.

But then his fingers froze. He noticed where his fingers had went without him even paying attention.

‘Sensei’, the caller ID said.

Swallowing a wad of spit and with a heavy breath, Yusuke pressed the ‘call’ button.

* * *

While she was worried enough for her senior officer, after the talk in the car, Hifumi was worried for her friend. When the news came, Makoto had jumped at the chance with not even a moment’s consideration, not a single millisecond wasted.

She was trying to distract herself by devoting all of her focus to the case and it was blindingly obvious that her failure to catch the Thieves had taken its toll.

Hifumi didn’t like seeing her friend putting herself on a path of self-destruction.

“Describe the robber for me, please,” Makoto said to Yusuke, her face an unmoving mask of professional stoicism, not reacting even slightly as Yusuke gave her a pitch-perfect description of the Joker.

“He didn’t steal anything, not to my knowledge,” Yusuke mentioned. “But he broke into the house with such ease-”

But Yusuke suddenly became deathly silent in his testimony when he saw Madarame step out of his limousine, and he had no idea why.

“The Joker must have broken into the shack for something, Kitagawa. What was he after?”

He could tell her. He could tell her so easily about the room full of copies of the  _ Sayuri. _ He could tell her everything about what the Joker had told him about Sensei. He could-

“Yusuke!” Madarame cried as he laid eyes on him - and the words just died in his mouth.

“I… I…”

Makoto craned her head at the young artist.

“I don’t know. Everything was so confusing. I… I don’t know.”

Yusuke’s stomach sank.

“I see…” Makoto replied, a hint of disappointment in her tone. “Thank you for your time.” And with that, Makoto stalked off inside the shack to investigate the crime scene with Hifumi close behind - but it would be a futile effort.

Yusuke knew this, because he had put the lock back on the door and gotten rid of the lockpick. So when the police officers had finally said their goodbyes and left the old master and young student back alone did he finally feel confident enough to ask him.

“Sensei… I… want to ask you a question.”

Madarame gave his adoptive son a soft smile and put his hand on his shoulder. “Of course, Yusuke. Anything.”

Yusuke took the deepest breath in his life.

“Why do you have all those copies of the  _ Sayuri, _ Sensei?”

Madarame’s smile fell. His grip on Yusuke’s shoulder tightened.

And he pulled him in close as his face contorted into a grimace.

“Yusuke. If you ever say as much as a word about what you saw in there, I will throw you out on the streets.” Madarame’s tone was filled with such venom, such indignant hissing anger that Yusuke would never have thought him capable of.

“S-Sensei!” Yusuke cried out as Madarame’s fingers dug into his shoulder. He held him there fast, the old man grinding his teeth together before suddenly settling on a pleased smile, one that boded ill.

“You are going to make one yourself, and I will put it on display at the end of the exhibition in two days. And if I see you sleep, if I see you  _ eat or drink _ until it’s done - your art career is over.”

“Y-You can’t-”

“I am the Master Artist Ichiryusai Madarame, the one who has mastered every single form of Japanese art! You’re nobody, and your future is dependent on  _ my word alone.” _

“N-No…”

Yusuke tried to wriggle out of Madarame’s grasp, but by then it was too late. The master artist put another hand on his shoulder and dug in hard.  _ “DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!” _

Yusuke’s arms fell, defeated.

“...Yes.”

And like that, Madarame was back to normal. His mask back on, the veneer of the Master Artist returned. “Good,” he said softly. “I will retire to my room. I look forward to seeing your progress.”

And as the man he once considered his father left, Yusuke was all alone with his easel, his paints…

...and his tears.


	5. Thief of the Seasons: The Calling Card

The idea of legacy has always been the purpose of art. Feelings, knowledge, beauty, all things we must pass down to the coming generations. I am not a glorious painter, not at all like many of the master artists that have come and gone. Yet, I will leave behind this one thing for I am not long for this world.

My beautiful baby boy. I would throw away everything if it meant a life spent raising you. But I can feel it in me, I am not long for this world. You will have to experience the beauty of desire and hope all on your own without me.

All I hope is that when you see this painting that I make for you, you will understand that above all else I loved you like nothing else.

And I always will.

So be happy, my son.

Be happy, Yusuke.

* * *

“Looks like you were right, Joker,” Oracle shuddered from the sound of Madarame’s voice. It had been a piece of cake for her to remotely hack into Yusuke’s smartphone and listen in. It was one thing to know what Madarame had done to fuel his own vanity. It was another to hear it.

“That son of a bitch!” Skull slammed his fist down onto the dashboard of the Phan-Van, not even stopping to cringe at what he did to his precious van. “Master Artist my ass! He’s just another shitty adult exploiting the people who trust him!”

Joker, in stark contrast to his two partners in crime said nothing. He sat there, one leg crossed over the other and vigorously tapping his foot up and down. Oracle wanted to say something, but she got one glimpse of the grimace on his face and her words just died in her throat. She loved Joker as her big brother and sibling, and nothing would ever change that. But when Joker got an expression like that, him visibly trying to contain his anger and  _ failing. _

She had to admit, in those moments he terrified her.

“We’re going to ruin this bastard,” Joker said with no room to argue. “I don’t care about the painting. I want him  _ destroyed.” _

Skull didn’t say anything in response to that. He just scrunched up his lips and nodded in full agreement.

Finally, Oracle gathered her composure enough to speak. The air felt like it was electrically charged, like the van was one giant thunderstorm. “Yeah. I don’t… I want him to pay. He has to pay, Joker.”

“Couldn’t agree more. Skull, get us out of here. We have a heist to plan and a calling card to write.”

* * *

It was in times like these that she missed Sae the most. As cold and distant as her older sister had been for a lot of the time that Makoto knew her, there were still those moments where the person she used to be would shine through.

Being a woman in the Japanese law enforcement was hard enough. Having to raise a younger sister while still mourning a lost mother and father would be too much for most to bear. But Sae bore it and she bore it with dignity and pride.

And now she was dead and Makoto was all alone. Sae’s hard work as public prosecutor didn’t stop a thing.

Sometimes, Makoto wondered what the point of it all was. Here she stood, in front of the Chief Inspector once again and had to tell him that she had missed the Phantom Thieves by a hairs’ breath for the second time.

“You worthless waste of time!” Yoshiaki practically howled, and Makoto could do nothing but just accept it as quietly as possible. If she was quiet, it would stop earlier.

The Chief Inspector sat down again in his chair, practically bellowing air from his nose as he breathed deep breaths in and out, his fists practically shaking. “For the life of me I don’t understand why I didn’t just throw you right out on your ass when you pulled your stunt. And now, of all times, I have Senior Detective Akio Tsukaba asking me why he wasn’t given the case instead of you.”

“Sir,” Makoto replied, her voice as low and as deferent as possible. “W-We have strong reason to believe that the Phantom Thieves will attempt to steal the  _ Sayuri _ on the day of its exhibition. Because of that, we-”

**_“I don’t care about your excuses!”_ **

There was no chance that everyone outside hadn’t heard this. By now everyone would know that she was in the firing line. So much for that promotion.

“Get out of my goddamn office, Niijima. If I hear this again, you can consider your career as a policewoman over.”

At least it was all over now. Makoto gave a curt “Yes, sir,” turned tail and quickly left. She could  _ feel _ the stares boring into her from all over, but she didn’t look at them. All she did was look down towards the ground and stepped out of the central precinct as quickly as she could.

Her cheeks were red and her eyes puffy. Her hand was shaking involuntarily as she pulled open the door on the patrol car. She wanted to go home. She couldn’t let anyone see her like this.

...she needed a cup of coffee. Hopefully that café Hifumi mentioned was still open. She could use a pick-me-up. Bad.

* * *

Makoto’s first thought when she saw the entrance to the café was one of apprehension. At first she was dreading that it would turn out to be one of those retro places where the staff forced these weird attitudes and parroted overly “thematic” phrases as if they were mimicking shops from France or Italy.

As the bell signalling the door being opened rang, Makoto took the interior of LeBlanc in. It looked surprisingly quaint, a lot more muted and relaxed in its decór than she expected. The cafe was also completely empty. If she couldn’t hear the bubbling of boiling water she would have thought the café was closed and whoever owned it simply forgot to close the door.

“One moment, I’ll be right down!” A voice called out from the attic. Makoto wanted to just sit herself down immediately, but… she was too wound up. She just stood there in front of the door she had closed behind her.

Eventually the owner came down, and Makoto was surprised to see that its owner wasn’t some crusty old man. It was in fact a young man, and if she had to hazard a guess she would assume about the same age as her. “Don’t just stand there,” he said. “Sit down and I’ll be right with you.”

Makoto was jolted from her train of thought and the exhaustion hit her once again. With slow, measured steps she sat herself down on a bar stool and practically fell down onto the counter, her face buried under her arms.

“That kind of day?” Ren had to say, he thought he was handling the situation well. The police officer who had almost arrested him a week ago was now in his café and wasn’t putting cuffs on him. Then again, she looked absolutely  _ wrecked. _

“Mhmn,” Makoto affirmed, not even bothering to try and keep her composure. The only two people here were herself and the barista, and she didn’t have enough energy left for today to bother. “Word of advice, don’t join law enforcement.”

“Straight to the point, I see. I’ll get you a strong cup, you sound like you need it.” The words brought a slow comfort to Makoto’s ears and she allowed herself to let out a breath that was somewhere between a sigh and a groan.

Ren couldn’t help but feel bad whilst he was making Officer Niijima his “Wake Me Up Inside” cup of coffee, nicknamed so when Futaba tried it once and didn’t sleep for three whole days after. Whatever she meant by that he didn’t exactly get, but he had to admit it was a fitting title.

Makoto stirred somewhat awake when a cup of joe in a coaster was slid onto the bar table in front of her. Giving the barista a quiet ‘thank you’, she took a sip…

And like that, she was awake again. Good God that coffee was strong. Ren couldn’t help but chuckle a little when he saw the police officer hot on his tail look like she’d just swallowed bitter medicine. “I take it the coffee is strong enough?”

“Yes,” Makoto coughed. “Milk and sugar, please.”

“Coming right up.”

Immediately after the barista pushed it over to her, Makoto took the jug of cream and began to pour it into the coffee. The deep black coffee began to become a brown swirling mess of black and white.

“So what’s on your mind, Officer?” Choosing to not respond immediately, Makoto instead took her teaspoon and began to slowly spin it around in her coffee idly.

“I’m not at liberty to say,” Makoto chose to say, inhaling a deep breath through her nose all the while.

“That rough, huh?” Ren replied with no hesitation whatsoever. “Must have been really bad. Your eyes are still red.”

With a slight gasp, Makoto immediately grabbed a nearby complimentary napkin and started drying her eyes. Deciding to focus on her coffee, she poured in another helping of cream and started mixing it yet again.

“You’ll drown out the flavour if you pour that much cream in,” Ren pointed out and Makoto did her absolute best to ignore the barista’s pointed words. “It’s not my fault this coffee is so strong,” she retorted.

“True,” Ren acquiesced. “You raise a good point, Officer.” Makoto raised the cup of coffee up to her lips and tasted it. It tasted like cream, now. Barely any hint of coffee left. “Today’s special is red curry served on white rice. Would you like some? My little sister loves it.”

Makoto wanted to leave. This whole conversation made her uncomfortable, she wanted to crawl under her blankets on her bed and sleep for a whole week. But she had no plans for dinner, and she needed comfort food. Some curry could hit the spot. She could always leave the moment she was done.

“Yes, thank you.” Ren smiled in response and gave her a pleased “Coming right up,” as he turned around to fill her a plate while Makoto cursed her exhausted and agitated brain for making her stay in this café.

Barely a minute passed before Ren turned back around again and placed a plate of freshly cooked steaming hot LeBlanc curry in front of the tired police officer. The scent of spicy curry and steaming rice went straight into her sinuses. She could feel her stomach practically rumble with anticipation.

“Bon appetit,” Ren punctuated by placing a set of cutlery wrapped in a red napkin on the counter and sliding it over to Makoto. A second passed, and Makoto picked them up and unfolded the napkin.

“I’ll let you eat in peace,” and like that, Ren took off his apron and left the counter. “Don’t worry about payment, this one is on the house.”

Makoto sat there in silence, listening to the barista as he took slow steps up the stairs until finally it was quiet before she gathered up a forkful of rice and curry on her fork and put it in her mouth.

Makoto exhaled a breath she didn’t know she had been holding and a smile graced her lips as she enjoyed her coffee and curry.

* * *

The moment Ren made it up the stairs, he was greeted with two very angry adoptive siblings who, nonetheless, remained quiet. Prototype calling cards were scattered everywhere on the floor. Ryuji looked like he was about to have an aneurysm. Futaba looked like she was about to exhale her very soul from fear.

Ren simply sat himself down on the wooden boards, picked up one of the calling cards scattered around and read it through. Everything looked good, he was particularly proud of how the line “the revelation of your crimes countless shall be a thing of true beauty” looked in the clip-out style art they always used for their calling cards.

When he remembered that yes, Ryuji and Futaba were still staring at him like he’d killed Morgana, he without an ounce of hesitation said “What’s wrong?”

Ryuji tried his best to not have a meltdown whilst trying to stay quiet so that the police officer underneath them didn’t notice. Futaba was physically shaking, to the point that Morgana had to jump off the mattress and run into her lap to calm her down.

From a certain point of view, Ren understood why they were furious with him. He had invited a police officer inside the café and even kept conversation with her when if she was any more attentive she could quickly pick him out as being Joker thanks to the “conversation” the two of them shared back in Madarame’s museum.

But when Ren came down from the stairs he had seen a beautiful woman with eyes puffy from crying, her cheeks red from embarrassment and shame and her head tilted down as if she was desperately trying to just  _ get away _ from all the bad things in life. He hadn’t become a Phantom Thief just because he wanted to get back at all the bad people in the world - he had become one because he wanted to stop them from hurting all the good people in the world.

And Makoto Niijima was hurting.

How could he tell someone like that to get out of his café?

Ren loved his adopted siblings like they were his actual siblings, but sometimes it felt like they forgot why they decided to be Phantom Thieves in the first place. He understood why; there really was nothing else like giving a “shitty adult” as Ryuji would put it, a taste of their own medicine - but sometimes he had his doubts.

But nothing dispelled those doubts like when he’d see people like Makoto or Yusuke. People under the thumb of those “shitty adults”, who had no choice but to do what they were told and keep their heads down.

It was for those kinds of people he were doing this. And if everything went well, what was going to happen within the next 48 hours would mean a better life for both of them, and a short trip to a long stay in a prison cell for Madarame.

He was tempted to walk back down and try to talk to her, but he relented. She clearly wasn’t in any condition to want to talk to anyone right now. What she needed was good food, coffee and the opportunity to relax just a little. He’d give her half an hour to herself, then he’d figure out what to do.

One minute became five. Five became fifteen. Fifteen became fifty before Ren finally found it in himself to interrupt her. He came down to see an unexpected sight; Makoto Niijima slumped onto the counter next to a squeaky-clean plate and empty cup of coffee. He was surprised to see her asleep, but then again the inner workings of Futaba’s biochemistry was a riddle for the ages, sleep deprivation was practically her usual state of being.

Regardless, he took the empty plate, cup and cutlery and got to work scrubbing them clean in the kitchen sink. About the time he was almost done, the cutlery always got a second go just to be safe; Makoto began to stir.

It took her a few moments to get her bearings and to realize that no, she wasn’t home in her bed, she was on the counter in a café in Yongen. The moment she did realize her situation, she scrambled to get to her feet followed by a cavalcade of “um” and “uh” as she struggled to figure out what to say.

“Breathe easily, Officer,” Ren said with a smile as he turned towards her, still drying off the washed cutlery with a rag. “You’re not the first person to fall asleep here in my café. No harm done.”

“It’s still improper,” Makoto’s facial expression betrayed her embarrassment, with a slight blush dusting her cheeks. “I-I must have made other customers walk away in-”

“No such thing, Officer. The doorbell never rang.”

“Still,” Makoto practically groaned. “I must get going.”

“You’re welcome to come by another time, Officer,” Ren said as Makoto was already halfway towards the door. She did stop for a moment, but then she took hold of the handle and pulled the door open. “I won’t bother you anymore,” was the last thing she said before she left LeBlanc, not even noticing the sign saying ‘CLOSED’ on the outside.

Barely a second passed before Ren heard two sets of footsteps come down the stairs. In seconds Ryuji and Futaba were both down in the café, and both were glaring at him with all the indignant fury they could muster.

“What?”

“FOR REAL, RENREN?!” Ryuji was howling, certainly loud enough to be heard outside since an older woman passing by LeBlanc recoiled in surprise at the sound and decided that she would get her coffee somewhere else.

“Ryuji, would you please-” As a matter of fact, no, he would not.

“Of ALL the chicks that would dig you, of ALL of them, you just have to get the hots for a  _ cop? _ And  _ now, of all times?” _

“I do not-”

“Ren, remember we could hear everything you just said.”

“Futaba, you know just as well as I do that-”

“Mrow.”

“Don’t you start, Morgana.”

* * *

The next day, the citizens of Tokyo woke up to a sight that set the media into a frenzy. On the third day of the art exhibition organized by the famous Master of Japanese Arts, Ichiryusai Madarame, the day where the museum was set to unveil the star attraction - the famous  _ Sayuri, _ the magnum opus of the eponymous Master Artist.

Covering the beautiful see-through glass doors were dozens of red-and-black calling cards bearing the insignia of the Phantom Thieves.

**_Sir Ichiryusai Madarame,_ **

**_the vainglorious thief,_ **

**_Your time as the Master Artist has come to an end. Tonight, your crimes of theft of the ideas and artworks of your pupils will end as we expose them to the world. You claim to pursue beauty but you are an ugly eyesore who does nothing but leech off of those who fall for your lies and facades._ **

**_When we are done, the only thing the world will know you as is the Master of Fraud. The revelation of your crimes countless shall be a thing of true beauty. Prepare yourself and make peace with those whose suffering have brought you undeserved success._ **

**_We, the Phantom Thieves, are coming for the Sayuri._ **

The Phantom Thieves Phansite roared to life, its chatrooms ablaze nonstop with everyone’s bated breath directed at the Master Artist. Within an hour, a huge crowd gathered itself outside the museum leading to clashes with the police.

“Madarame, sir. Would it not be wisest to cancel the exhibition?”

The Master Artist was fuming. How  _ dare _ these upstart Thieves try and unmask him? He was the Great Madarame, who draws full crowds of Japan’s finest whenever he launches an exhibit! He would not be made to cower because of angry teenagers with a bone to pick with their betters - he would show them!

Yes, yes he would show them. He would play the compassionate artist when his plan succeeded, and his fame would only increase. He would turn the Phantom Thieves into yet another stepping stone to greatness!

“No,” Madarame hissed. “We proceed as planned.”

_ Come and take  **my** masterpiece if you can, Phantom Thieves! _


	6. Thief of the Seasons: The Heist

Almost two days later, after no sleep and over the protesting grumbles of his stomach, Yusuke laid the finishing touch on the copy of the  _ Sayuri. _ He felt like reeds stamped down and crushed underneath industrial farming equipment, he was exhausted and battered and worn out.

A final touch and there it was. The signature marking of his Sensei, as always.  It was… one thing to be allowing Sensei to publish the artworks that he, his apprentice, made for him to help him in his slump. He had done that willingly, gladly even for the man he considered his father.

But this, this was something else entirely. This felt horrid. It only got worse when Madarame came through the door into Yusuke’s atelier with a smile on his face that Yusuke could tell was fake now.  The robe-clad Madarame slowly traipsed past his exhausted apprentice and looked the painting over. 

In a clearly practiced motion, Madarame put one hand to his chin and looked the imitation over.  “Excellently done, Yusuke,” Madarame said, satisfied with the mimicry. Yusuke hated that he still felt a pang of joy at his Sensei’s approval. “Yes, I do believe that this will suffice.”

Yusuke allowed himself to take a deep breath and almost immediately doze off on the stool he had been sitting on for nearly 48 hours - if it wasn’t for Madarame putting his claw-like grip on his shoulder.  “Listen to me now, Yusuke. If I see you at the exhibition today, you are finished. You hear me? Today  _ must _ go swimmingly, and if it does not… you will be punished accordingly.”

Yusuke was too exhausted, too lacking in energy, too completely and utterly dashed to pieces both physically and mentally to respond with anything more than a gulp.

“I don’t care what else you do. Hang yourself like my last apprentice did, it means nothing to me.”  The wide, soft smile that Madarame hid his venomous words behind only made them sting all the more. The Phantom Thief had been right, and he had been too stubborn and naïve to see Sens- to see Madarame for the disgusting creature he really was.

He gave a lazy, almost delirious nod in reply.

“Good,” and Madarame let go of his shoulder. “Get yourself something to eat, boy. You sound hungry.”

And like that, Madarame left Yusuke alone like a discarded doll.

* * *

Makoto counted her blessings that Yoshiaki hadn’t immediately handed her a firing notice when the news broke that the Phantom Thieves had sent a calling card in advance - but she couldn’t fathom why.

He  _ had _ said that he was going to end her career if any other screw-ups happened, and she had stayed quiet and taken it like a good officer.  Maybe that’s why he had been lenient this time. Regardless, this was her one last chance. The entire precinct was coming down to watch the exhibition on the day the  _ Sayuri _ was scheduled to be shown.

It was all or nothing, now. Hifumi was relentlessly tapping the side of the window, her anxiousness obvious.  In the rearview mirror Takamaki and Suzui were dead silent. They weren’t bobbing their heads back and forth, absorbed in conversation.  And in the car behind them, Kawakami and Mishima were following along with not a single mistake in their driving.

This was now or never. Their careers were on the line.

* * *

With a light grunt of exertion, Skull pulled the cover of the venue’s electrical box off. It was broad daylight, but the rooftop was suspiciously empty.  Joker held out a red-glove hand and Skull placed a set of tiny rubber-handled wire cutters in his hand.

“Cut all the wires except for one,” Oracle ordered as she produced a fresh laptop and began readying her program list, tapping away as Joker snip-snapped a few cables.

“Skull? USB cable.” The cable was wordlessly placed in Joker’s hand who promptly plugged it into both the terminal and handed the other end to Oracle, who held her hand out in a wordless “in a moment”.  After another few seconds, the hacker swiped the other end of the USB cable into her laptop.

A moment passed where absolutely nothing happened in complete silence, o nly the slight wind and the hum of the laptop’s processor broke it.

“All ready now. I’m ready for Phase 1.”

Now, it was just a matter of waiting for the exhibition to begin. Staying out of sight, the Phantom Thieves sat patiently on the rooftop whilst their tech-wizard kept a close eye on the police radio.

In a bag placed carefully next to the tall figure of Skull were three things. A stolen forgery of the  _ Sayuri _ from Madarame’s shack, a stolen janitor’s uniform coupled with a cart full of cleaning supplies and a simple grappling hook pistol. No need for complicated tools when a heist can be carried out without them.

“Thirty minutes until showtime.”

“You had better give me the chance, Joker.”

“You had better make use of it, Skull.”

“You two had better shut up and get ready.”

* * *

The inside of the venue was practically pandemonium. The guests were cramped and they were antsy and agitated. Some were anxious and seemed like they were about to go off at any second, the stress of the Phantom Thieves coming to make good on their declaration was a lot to put on someone’s shoulders.

Others, even amongst the clientele allowed to visit a venue like this were almost excited, like devoted fans at one of Rise Kujikawa’s concerts. Even the elite could nurse a fascination with puckish rogues.  _ A rose by any other name, _ Makoto told herself.  _ They’re still criminals. Even if Madarame is guilty, that doesn’t make them any less guilty themselves. _

Even though the press attention had passed, what happened at the museum was still a raw memory; recalling it took her away from her standard calm and induced a whirling maelstrom of emotions that she couldn’t put a leash on.

Still, as embarrassing a result it had ended up with - falling asleep in a cafe was  _ not _ something a proper officer of the law did, thank you very much - she looked back fondly on her visit to Leblanc. The curry had been delicious and the coffee invigorating once she’d blunted the caffeine with cream and sugar.

She found herself wishing she was still there, and not here in the middle of all this chaos. But her career was on the line, either the Phantom Thieves came with her in handcuffs or she came home without a future.  Right beside her, Officer Ann Takamaki chose at first to not catch Makoto’s attention and instead just let out a sigh. 

She’d wished that they had never been given this case, it was clearly taking a toll on their senior officer both physically as well as mentally.

Deciding that being sensitive to Makoto’s problems was secondary to letting her make it even worse for her perfectionist self, Ann put a hand on the Senior Officer’s shoulder.

“Officer Niijima? Are you there?”  She did not miss that it took her several seconds to snap out of whatever was bothering her.

“What, wha?” She almost sounded groggy, or perhaps she just wasn’t all there. Stress was a hell of a thing. “Yes, yes I’m here. What is it, Officer Takamaki?”

Ann was about to say something, but was distracted by the sound of Kawakami slugging a restless patron in the back of the head and leaving poor Mishima to handcuff him and take him to the patrol car outside to cool off.

Tensions were undoubtedly high, and Ann needed to have her Senior Officer take charge. Deliberating for a second on how to encourage her the best, Ann decided - if anyone needed to get in the zone now, it was Makoto.

“I’m going to take Shiho with me and patrol the behind-the-scenes and leave the Master Artist to you. He’ll want to talk to someone.”

Makoto blinked.

“O-Of course. Get to it, then. We have a painting to protect.” And just like that, Makoto Niijima was buried and Police Queen Niijima was back in action. Her back was straight up, her gaze focused and her mind back in working order.  Ann allowed herself a smile at a job well done as she saw Makoto disappear in between the restless crowd.

“Do you think she’ll be okay?” In the midst of it all, Shiho had found her way back through the crowd while Kawakami was calming them down after she’d knocked one out.

“I don’t know, Shiho. I just hope that we catch the Thieves today, maybe that will finally get her to breathe.”

Officer Shiho Suzui gave an affirmative “mhmm” in response, and that was the end of that dialogue. They needed to keep their eyes open now, who knows what would happen next. Any second now the Phantom Thieves could pop out of nowhere and make off with the  _ Sayuri. _

Ann had to admit to herself, it was pretty exciting to know that they would be coming right for them. Finally, they got their hands on something big to handle. All they’d had to do before was whatever milk runs dribbled down from the table at the men’s club.

But here they were, the misfit cops making it big.

Making their way into the backrooms of the venue, the two started to patrol the hallways. Where might once have been a massive bustle of staff rushing to make sure the reveal of the Master of Japanese Arts’ vaunted masterpiece, now it was comparatively empty.  It took them a whole fifteen minutes to find a janitor.

“Excuse us!” Ann cried out in her practiced police officer tone. “Identification please!”

“‘Course, give me a second,” the janitor replied, stopping his cart and beginning to fish out an I.D card. One look at him made Ann feel kind of bad, he walked with this kind of forward hunch that implied a lot of bending over forwards on the job.

“Here. Hey, you’re here cos’ of those Phantom Thieves, right?”

Ann suppressed a dismissive sneer. “A fan, are you?”

“Nah,” the janitor replied. “You know that museum they robbed a few days ago? The old man worked security there. Got himself fired afterwards, so now the family isn’t doing so well.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Shiho reflexively replied, and Ann caught the implication. If the Thieves made off with the Sayuri, it wasn’t out of the question that this young janitor would lose his job as well.

“Catch ‘em, will ya? Help us all sleep easier at night.”

“We will, don’t worry.” Handing the janitor back his ID, Ann and Shiho kept patrolling, but with a renewed sense of purpose. It was a sobering reminder that they weren’t the only ones with their livelihoods at stake thanks to the Thieves.

A shame it made them miss the hidden forgery of the  _ Sayuri _ hidden amongst the cleaning articles in the cart.  Reaching into his pocket, Skull grabbed the pager and clicked three times on it to signal Oracle and Joker that he was in position. Grabbing the shadow of his cap, he pulled it down just a little more to hide his blonde dyed hair.  Now, it was just a matter of time until the unveiling began and Joker could get the party started.

He just hoped that Joker wouldn’t ruin the whole thing by flirting with that police officer.

“Skull is in position,” Oracle echoed as a soundless alert played on her laptop. “Patrons are restless but I haven’t found Madarame anywhere yet.”

“Keep looking. There’s no way he’s not coming out to unveil the  _ Sayuri _ himself.”

Joker, meanwhile, was performing a last-minute check of his grappling hook pistol. A custom job made thanks to the technical know-how of Oracle and the physical know-how of Iwai. The perfect tool for a flamboyant Phantom Thief.

“Try not to ruin the whole thing flirting with Niijima, Joker.”

Joker had the audacity to appear slighted. “Perish the thought, Oracle. You know I’m running distraction here, a certain amount of flirting is to be expected.”

Letting out a long-suffering sigh, Oracle kept flicking through the museum’s camera feeds in the vain hope that if she didn’t acknowledge Joker’s blatant intention to flirt the pants off of the policewoman officer - or at least give it the old college try, maybe it would just go away and never happen.

“It’s a good thing you’re only running distraction, then.”

“What, does leaving that responsibility to Skull make you feel more comfortable about this?”

Despite her best efforts, Oracle flinched in response and Joker gave her his signature infernally smug grin.

“You… you are going to come back, right?”

The earlier smug expression on Joker’s face turned to one of confusion. “What do you mean, Oracle?”

“I don’t want to lose half of my only family because you want to flirt with a police officer, Ren.”  And just like that, the joking mood was given a violent hangover cure and made sober. An upset police officer was given a particularly strong cup of coffee.

Taking a deep breath, Ren walked right over to Futaba and put his hand on her head. “It’s going to be fine, Futaba. Trust me.”

And Futaba couldn’t help but coo as her adoptive brother gave her an affectionate head rub. Ren had to admit, even he got caught up in everything sometimes. Maybe he had been a little too empathetic towards a cute cop he barely knew and didn’t think about how his own family might feel.  “I’m scared, Ren.”

“It's okay.” Terrible timing aside, she was still his darling little sister and he’d be damned if he ever held off from supporting her emotionally when she needed him to.  Futaba left her laptop and pulled her biggest big brother into a hug, shaking like she was out in freezing weather with no clothes on. The only thing Ren could really do was repeat “it’s going to be okay,” over and over while Futaba got it out of her system.

He hadn’t brought Morgana, so this was the second-best option.

After a long, empty silence Futaba finally composed herself, flicking up her goggles to dry a rogue tear away with her suit-covered finger. “I… I think I’m okay now, Joker.”

Back to business then. “Glad to hear it, Oracle. Can we get eyes on the Master Artist now?”  And like that, the fire was lit back up. In barely seven seconds Oracle was back on her laptop, working her magic - flicking through camera feeds, running facial recognition software to assist her own eyes.

“I got him! He’s…”

“He’s what?”

“He’s with Officer Niijima.”

* * *

And true enough, there she was on the camera feed - helping the poor old Master Artist out of his chair in the VIP lounge and down the stairs to the exhibition hall. Joker had to give the old man credit, he was an astonishing actor. If he didn’t know what he already did, he might even be fooled by it as well.

“Thank you,” Madarame said, accompanying his gratitude with a deep but unsteady huff of the lungs. “I am not as well as I once was. It is a matter of miracle that I can still paint.”

“It’s part of the duty,” Makoto parroted the line she had been told a thousand times before. Doing a good deed like this is part of the duty as much as catching criminals is. Madarame gave the police officer a practiced, magnanimous smile.

“May I ask you a personal question, officer?” The words came out of the blue, and Makoto had to fight off a flinch, but the Master Artist definitely noticed her eyes widening in surprise. Luckily, all he did was smile in just a slightly more relaxed manner, clearly doing his best to put the young police officer at ease.

“Of-Of course, Madarame sir,” Makoto said, praying that her slight fluster masked her discomfort. She was not in a state ready for any personal questions whatsoever, but when a world-famous japanese artist several times her senior wanted to ask a question she wasn’t in with a choice.

“Why did you choose this career?”

The sentence hit Makoto in her gut like a freight train, and it was indeed a testament to her incredible self control that she didn’t show it.  Noticing that Makoto said nothing, nothing at all in response, Madarame went on with his planned spiel regardless. Appearances meant everything.

“I always doubted myself, all through my life as I painted every day in and out. Many a day didn’t go by where I did not question my decision and wonder if I could have been something else…”  His gaze went over to the still covered wooden atelier where the  _ Sayuri _ had been placed the night before. 

In just a moment he would be unveiling it, he’d pull off the cover and show his masterpiece to the world in a show of defiance towards the Phantom Thieves.  “That is why the  _ Sayuri _ means everything to me. It is evidence that I might have some form of legacy in this world. That something I made, something I did, meant something.”

Makoto said nothing. In fact, she wasn’t really listening, either.  “Here I go.” And with that, Madarame stepped towards the concealed painting and the entire gallery went silent with anticipation as he ran the cloth over the Sayuri through his fingers for just a moment.

Above, Joker had his hand by the skylight and his grappling hook gun in the other while Oracle was waiting on her laptop, breathing in and out so frequently her screen started to fog up.

“May I have your attention, please.” Madarame’s voice was soft yet practiced, the perfect image of the humble master artist, whose talent was tempered with age and wisdom. Every single eye in the building that could was on him and the  _ Sayuri _ by extension.  “Before I unveil my work, allow me to make one meager request to everyone here in attendance - as this will be my last exhibit I myself show in person.”

The bombshell that Madarame dropped had the expected effect - everyone in attendance broke out in hushed whispers. The Master Artist himself, announcing his retirement from the public eye?  “These… Phantom Thieves hanging over my head is simply too much for my heart. But this… this I must do. I must show the  _ Sayuri _ one final time myself.”

And in that instant, when Madarame pulled down the curtain and revealed the  _ Sayuri, _ the world became chaos as several things happened at once. 

First, the masterpiece of a painting was revealed to the excited onlookers for all of a few seconds.

Second, the lights went out as Oracle tapped a button.

Third, the sudden loss of light got the gallery attendants agitated thanks to their sudden loss of sight.

Fourth, Hifumi alongside Kawakami and Mishima started yelling for everyone to calm down so as to restore order.

Fifth, a tired, exhausted and borderline delirious Yusuke Kitagawa stumbled through the gallery entrance.

And sixth, Police Officer Makoto Niijima saw the Joker swipe the  _ Sayuri _ off of the atelier right in front of the Master Artist and every single police officer on-scene.

For a moment, there was no sound in the entire gallery, like every single person inside held their breath the moment a Phantom Thief seemingly emerged right out of the shadows and stole a priceless piece of art in full view of everyone else.

The audacity, the unrestrained beauty of such a deed - Yusuke had to admit, the sight was mesmerizing.

Then, the silence broke as the gravity of the situation fell down upon everyone else like a ton of bricks.

**_“THIEF!”_ ** Madarame cried, his eyes wide and his jaw open. The Joker met Makoto eye-to-eye for a single second, then managed to sneak a wink in before she managed to pull out her service revolver.  Before she could do anything else, Joker fired his grappling hook gun and reeled himself up in the air. It seemed like it was going to be a repeat of their last encounter, with the Joker escaping with his prize.

But this time, Makoto wasn’t about to let him get away. Closing one eye and leaning upwards she pulled the trigger and a bullet streaked right past the rising Joker - who decided that not being shot was the better part of valor and immediately jumped off and onto the second-floor balcony.

“Hifumi! Help Madarame!” Makoto yelled without a second thought, not even pausing to see her partner nod and immediately run over to support the shocked Master Artist as she sprinted towards the stairs in hot pursuit.  Joker shoulder-slammed his way through the closed door just as Makoto cleared the stairs, everyone’s eyes on her.

It only took Mishima a second to pull out his walkie-talkie with a cool flourish he’d been practicing for weeks in secret - and it was worth it when he saw Kawakami’s utterly flabbergasted expression.

_ “Officer in pursuit, officer in pursuit! The Senior Officer is pursuing the Joker! I repeat, the Senior Officer is after the Phantom Thief!” _

“Bait taken,” Oracle murmured as she kept a close watch on the camera feeds - and noticing her heart go faster and faster every time she saw Joker blaze past one of the cameras. The audio package she’d stayed up all night to prepare was ready, and with Kitagawa having found his way here? Well, that could be considered a lucky bonus on their part.

A small alert on her laptop got Oracle’s focus. A staff member had used the silent alarm to contact the police to get reinforcements. “Aaaaaand whoops, guess it tried to call a private number,” she sing-song taunted. “What a shame. Git gud, IT guys.”  By now, it all depended on Joker and Skull pulling off the heist itself. There would be no way that Madarame wasn’t going to make sure that the  _ Sayuri _ itself wasn’t safe after the Phantom Thieves seemingly escaped.

Vanity was going to be his downfall - that, and enough recorded audio to serve as effective evidence of his crimes to throw him right in prison with a lesson learned about why you don’t underestimate the youth.

Of course, as long as they didn’t get caught first. She had to admit, he’d only met her twice but Joker had already made riling up Niijima into an artform. She got a look at her facial expression through one camera feed and for a second she thought she was looking at a Balkan stone carving of Satan rather than a human being.

What did he say to have her react like that?

Joker had outdone himself, if he didn’t need to be modest. He didn’t even say a single word to Officer Niijima, all he did was wink at her and now she was charging after him like nothing else in the world mattered. While it was exactly what he needed, if he messed up and exposed Skull to her - which would be especially bad since she’d seen him before when they made off with the Regent - and the entire show would fall apart.

A four quick taps with his pager to Skull signalled “get ready for switch, cop on my tail” as he jumped right across an improperly placed table. Thinking quickly, Joker grabbed some stacked boxes close by and flung them down behind him in an attempt to buy himself just a little more time.  He didn’t look behind himself, he couldn’t afford to lose his focus - but the sound of a muffled scream and the continued sound of boxes being toppled over, Joker took his chance and blasted around a corner to get out of sight.

Barely four seconds passed before Makoto was on her feet again and charging right after the Phantom Thief. The moment she got past the corner however, Joker was already gone. One set of stairs going up or down by a toppled sign, one hallway continuing forward and a door to her right.

“O-Officer!” A voice suddenly caught Makoto’s attention and she turned towards it, the source turning out to be a janitor who looked like he’d seen a ghost. “H-He went upstairs! Hurry!”

“Thank you,” she breathed out before blasting up the stairs. Immediately she saw the faint flutter of the Joker’s black coat and knew she was right on his tail. The Joker made it up to the third floor and bolted away with the  _ Sayuri _ in one hand and what looked like a gun in his other hand.

“Drop the weapon!” Makoto yelled out reflexively as the Joker ran as fast as he could for a nearby window. Turning himself so he hit the window shoulder-first, the Joker fell out onto the fire escape and scrambled down.

“He’s coming to the ground floor! Officers Takamaki, Shiho, intercept him!”

* * *

Yusuke had no idea what in the world was going on. He could barely see anything and the venue was in chaos. He looked and looked but he couldn’t see Sensei- no, couldn’t see  _ Madarame _ anywhere.

Why… Why had he come here, anyways? Madarame had made it clear that his career as an artist was finished if he showed himself at this exhibit. Why hadn’t he stayed back at the shack and done as he was told?

He didn’t have an answer for himself. Something, something had made him move his legs and walk all this way, some… urge, deep inside. Maybe he wanted to try again, to desperately make all things go back before and have him assure that all that happened was a mere unpleasant dream.  Hah… the Joker hadn’t even forced him to see all the forgeries, had he? It was all a trick of the mind. Did the Phantom Thieves even exist? Of course not.

Then all that came crashing down when the Joker, real as could be came rushing out of a backroom door with the  _ Sayuri _ under his arm and Takamaki and Shiho in hot pursuit. Kawakami reacted fast and Joker came to a screeching halt as he was held at gunpoint.

Yusuke wasn’t paying attention to anything that was said. He could barely hear anything. He felt faint, like his body was about to collapse at any second. A second person, Officer Mishima, joined his partner in keeping eyes on the Joker as he stood there, frozen in the middle of the crowd.  Strange… he didn’t seem worried in the slightest. In fact, he seemed like everything was going exactly the way he wanted. His hands weren’t raised at all, he just stood completely still as to not provoke a gunshot.

Then, Yusuke’s heart sank as- as Madarame stepped forward, out of the crowd, accompanied by Hifumi. “Young man, please,” he said, his voice low and empathetic - but by now it rang hollow for Yusuke. It tasted of poison instead of honey. “-do not throw your life away like this.”

“Ironic, coming from you. I did promise you I would take the  _ Sayuri _ from you and expose you as the fraud you are.” Even from behind, Yusuke could see the Joker coil up, readying himself for action.

“Drop it!” Kawakami yelled, but all the Joker did was smirk. “Oh? You want this forgery? Madarame has made dozens. In that case…”  Joker pressed his pager once, and Oracle got the signal. Sticking a clean USB drive into the control panel and with a laugh, she pressed the button to allow Phase 2 to begin.

“Take it!” Joker cried and threw the  _ Sayuri _ up in the air - just as Oracle turned the lights back on and every single person even glancing upwards was promptly blinded.

And then - as Oracle packed up her laptop and headed down the fire escape, the museum’s intercom system began playing an audio track.

_ “Yusuke. If you ever say as much of a word about what you saw in there, I will throw you out on the streets.” _

A gasp ran through the crowd, and in that instant Yusuke made eye contact with Madarame. In the same instant, Joker disappeared up into the ceiling with his grappling hook gun once again as the forgery of the  _ Sayuri _ came clattering down - the canvas tearing off and destroying the painting with an ugly gash through it.

Immediately after, Makoto came crashing through the door the Joker had come through and set off in pursuit once again.  Taking advantage of the confusion, Madarame bolted as well, his breathing frantic as he fled the situation.

_ “I am the Master Artist Ichiryusai Madarame, the one who has mastered all forms of Japanese art! You’re nobody, and your future is dependent on  _ **_my word alone.”_ **

No, no no no. They couldn’t have stolen it, it was safe! He had seen through the Thieves, there was no way they had taken it! He sped up the staircase, past the toppled floor plan sign and an abandoned janitor’s cart and into his private room.  Safe still locked and the door still closed, Madarame allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief as he unlocked the safe where the real  _ Sayuri _ still was. 

It didn’t matter if everything else went wrong, as long as  _ his _ masterpiece was safe nothing else mattered.  With a happy chuckle, Madarame pulled the  _ Sayuri _ out of the safe and held it in his hands, rubbing it affectionately with his thumbs. He could still do it, all he had was to enact one of his contingency plans-

-and then all that crumbled when he pulled his thumb off of the  _ Sayuri _ and saw wet paint on his finger.

* * *

Oracle jumped inside the Phan-Van where Skull was waiting, his janitor’s uniform discarded, the real  _ Sayuri _ in his hands and the biggest damn smile in the world on his face.

“You can brag about it when we get home,” Oracle said preemptively, deflating Skull’s good mood a little at first. “We still need to pull Joker out of the fire.”

“Relax,” Skull said as he turned the key in the ignition. “Joker’ll be real thankful if we give him a little more alone time with Niijima.”

“Yeah yeah,” Oracle said, annoyed. “Just get us going. They’ll still be wondering how we did it, so we’re clear for a little while.”

* * *

“Aren’t you curious how we did it?” Joker’s smile was immaculate, even as he was cornered on the roof with his back to the edge. Makoto bit back a comment and decided instead to steady her aim on the Joker. She wasn’t getting in close, she wasn’t going to let him trick her like he did the last time they met.

Joker took her silence as not enough objection to stop him - so he decided he was going to milk this moment for all it was worth. “The painting that I stole was finished this morning by his pupil, Yusuke. Madarame had him awake for two whole days, starved of food and water for that whole time. It’s also the one he’s finding inside his safe right about now instead of the real  _ Sayuri.” _

Two whole days? As hesitant as Makoto was to trust anything this Phantom Thief said, just the thought of it made her stomach churn. Extreme work hours were not exactly an uncommon thing to see in today’s Japan, and seeing salarymen burn themselves completely out and get themselves arrested was a depressingly common occurrence.

But… two  _ whole days? _

“Then, what about the one you stole right in front of me?” Makoto’s question came out behind her bout of hesitance but once it was over her initial pause, it came out with full force. She was going to get as much out of the Joker as she could while she could.

Joker’s smirk became tinged with satisfaction and his eyes shone with a catlike gleam as Makoto bit the hook. “Oh, that one?” Roll of the eyes. “Ruined, hopefully. Just one of Madarame’s forgeries. He has dozens of them in his shack behind this big blue locked door. I pocketed one when I broke in three days ago. Ask Kitagawa, I showed ‘em to him.”

“He didn’t mention it at all when we arrived,” Makoto breathed in realization, as the implications of what the Joker was telling her started to sink in.

“If he had, I’d have never needed to steal the  _ Sayuri, _ Officer. You would have taken Madarame into custody, the extent of his crimes would be revealed to the public and Kitagawa would have been set free. But he didn’t, because that’s not how the world works.”

“And I take it you stole the Regent Diamond for the same reason?” That got a reaction out of the Joker, however minute it was. He flinched just a little. “Close. Whoever’d buy it you’d find in a heartbeat. Saves us the trouble of giving a calling card.”

“I’m afraid you’ll be telling us where you’ve hidden it regardless when I bring you in,” Makoto grit her teeth and dug her hand into the grip of her service revolver. “It ends here.”  To that, the Joker smiled. And he chuckled, a soft, gentle chuckle of amusement.

“I’m afraid you and I are going to be seeing a lot more of each other in the future.”  And just like that, the Joker took a step backwards over the edge and fell down from the roof. The moment she saw him tip, Makoto dropped her revolver instinctually and dove to catch him - but he was right out of her fingers.

As she glanced down, expecting to see him tumble down onto the pavement and see his body break and contort - she instead saw him land in a full trash container, jump out and get into that  _ goddamn van. _

And she’d dropped her gun.

* * *

“YUSUKE!” Madarame came storming down the stairs, canvas in hand and moving at a speed someone his age should never be able to move at, his face in a twisted grimace of pure anger.  Yusuke barely got a moment to realize what was happening before he felt a pair of hands around his throat that began to squeeze. “You were part of this, weren’t you?!  **Weren’t you?!** ”

The Master of Japanese Arts wasn’t even paying attention to anything that was going on around him, his anger laser-focused on his apprentice who was doing his absolute best to attempt to scramble out of his grip - but he’d been awake for 48 hours, deprived of food and water and in a state of delirium.

“You are dead, DO YOU HEAR ME?!  **_YOU ARE DEAD!_ ** _ ” _

“THOUSAND DRAGON TEMPEST!”

If the screaming Hifumi Togo hadn’t come to the rescue, Madarame might have been right and Yusuke would have died right then and there. But instead, the hysterical Master Artist received a kick to the side that sent him practically flying.  Inhaling a loud, wheezing breath once his breathing was unobstructed, Yusuke attempted to steady himself - and failed, falling down onto his back.

“Arrest him,” Madarame coughed as he gathered himself. “Arrest him, Officer! He’s part of the Phantom Thieves! He stole the  _ Sayuri! _ He’s behind it all!”

_ I don’t care what you do. Hang yourself like my last apprentice, it means nothing to me. _

“Madarame sir,” Mishima spoke up, stepping out of the crowd. “Even if what you just said is true… you attempted to kill your apprentice in front of dozens of witnesses.”

“And the audio track that just got played to us over the speakers? I don’t think it paints a very pretty look for you,” Unlike Mishima, Kawakami’s tone of voice was one of barely-disguised disgust.

“Preposterous! You honestly believe I said that?! Yusuke!” That brought the delirious young apprentice out of his daze. With a raging, vain gleam in his eyes, Madarame levelled his gaze upon him. Every single fiber of his being told him to do what he always did when the paparazzi and dismiss the accusations wholesale.

_ I think that that’s what your mother would have wanted it to. _

“YUSUKE!”

A defeated-looking Makoto came into the galleria to see the scene at play. Things started to click in ways she didn’t want them to. The sick, churning feeling of having to acknowledge that it now looked that the Joker was right.

A heavy, pregnant silence descended upon the crowd as Yusuke got to his feet.

“It’s all true,” he said, and all of Madarame’s rage went away as his face fell. “Madarame had me paint that mimicry to exhibit today. He… he said that to me,” he could barely say the last words without holding back a choked sob.

“Ichiryusai Madarame,” Makoto then declared, giving a shake of the head to Takamaki, who wrenched the Master Artist’s arms behind his back as Shiho slapped a pair of cuffs on the old man. “You have the right to remain silent.”

“No, no! No, you can’t do this to me!”

“Everything you do say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

“NO!” He cried as a grimacing Kawakami grabbed him by the neck of his robe and began to pull him towards the door. “Yusuke! _Yusuke don’t let them do this to me!”_

Yusuke closed his eyes and turned away.

“Goodbye, sensei.”

“NO! YUSUKE!  **_YUSUKE!!!”_ **

Finally, finally - Yusuke allowed himself to collapse, sobbing and crying against the velvet carpeting of the galleria as the two forgeries of the  _ Sayuri, _ one torn and the other smeared surrounded him.

**_HEIST COMPLETE_ **


	7. Thief of the Seasons: The Aftermath

What ensued was a veritable media frenzy. Not only had the infamous Phantom Thieves of Hearts stolen a priceless work of art in the _Sayuri,_ but they had driven the famous Master of the Japanese Arts to expose himself and his fraudulent, vanity-driven exploits to the public.

A particular highlight was Madarame crying his eyes out on national television begging for forgiveness for his crimes, crocodile tears spilling everywhere as he turned into a blubbering mess. Makoto had to admit a satisfied trill going down her spine the moment she saw it. That feeling of a huge serving of karma being thrown into a deserving face was something she always valued feeling after a job well done as a police officer.

It blunted the subsequent yelling-at she got from the Chief Inspector, since for all his furious indignant screaming for her failure to catch the Phantom Thieves and allowing them to make a mockery of Tokyo’s Finest yet again, she and her almost-entirely female squad had brought in a criminal of the highest order in Madarame.

So while she didn’t get anything resembling a promotion, and she was still stuck on the case of the Phantom Thieves for the foreseeable future - she wasn’t out of a job and neither was the rest of her unit.

She’d take that victory and run with it for now.

And as a matter of fact, when she announced that the unit’s future was still a _thing,_ Kawakami was the first one to express the elation and general relief that washed over the entire unit following the failure to catch the Phantom Thieves, in the one way she knew how.

“LET’S GET DRUUUUNK!”

After echoing calls from Takamaki and Suzui, coupled with a half-comitted noise betraying unease from Mishima - then followed by a sound from Togo that frankly could best be compared to an eagle’s screech did the entire unit spontaneously transform into a bunch of college students as opposed to police officers.

Makoto wanted to remind them that they were still expected to behave properly, as police officers-

-but she found she didn’t have the heart to tell them.

Besides, what could go wrong with them getting a little wild just for today?

Across the city, the Phantom Thieves felt a chill going up their backs.

* * *

It had only been a day since the Phantom Thieves had stolen the _Sayuri_ and brought the Master of Japanese Arts’ crimes to light. By all expectations, the mood inside Leblanc should have been one of celebration.

It wasn’t. It was a muted, tense affair. Sure, they _had_ brought another monstrous criminal to justice and performed an absolutely incredibly risky heist of one of the world’s finest pieces of art.

But it had been a trap. One they had the foresight to avoid and turn on its trapper, but a thinly-veiled attempt to bait them out. Most likely the fake Madarame presented had been fitted with a tracker which would take the Tokyo MPD right to Leblanc, and then his brother, his little sister and himself to an interrogation room where they would conveniently commit suicide.

“What do we do, Ren?” The TV was muted, the only sound in the café was that of the curry pot in the background bubbling and warbling.

Ryuji’s face was not a grimace of anger as it might’ve been. It was a stone-hard expression of grim acceptance. Morgana lay still in Futaba’s lap as she idly stroked her therapy cat.

“I’ll go see Iwai. His job almost got us busted. He’s gonna tell me who set us up like this.”

Ryuji gave his adoptive brother a stern nod. The silence hung thick in the air for a moment until Ryuji finally broke it with a “Screw all this sombre stuff. Can we not just enjoy that we did it anyway?”

The moment the words left his mouth, Ryuji saw Futaba’s face scrunch up and he felt like the world’s biggest idiot.

“...Where’d you learn that word? ‘Sombre’?”

Then Futaba started giggling.

“Hey! I can learn!” Ryuji’s tone was that of faux-indignancy at Futaba’s baseless accusation - and instantly, the mood changed. Now they were back to being a happy family again just for a little more.

With a smile on his face, Ren went back to the big pot of curry and began scooping out big spoonfuls onto three plates already full of rice. Today they were eating like kings, and they were gonna forget about all the bad stuff for once.

“Mrow!” Morgana let out a playful growl at Ryuji when he got a little too close, and Futaba started ruffling his little cat face. That cat was a real marvel to Ren, he had never seen a cat that intelligent and that sociable at the same time. It was almost like Morgana was a person of his own - he certainly liked being treated like it.

Well, except when it came to all of the parts a person was expected to do on their own. Then Morgana would tilt his head and play the stupid cat. To his credit, Ren did always try to resist.

 _Keyword: Try,_ Ren admitted as he filled up Morgana’s bowl while he was at it. He really did love that cat - he had been invaluable back when Sojiro passed away two years ago. Now there was an uncomfortable memory.

_It had been a smoggy April morning. Barely a few weeks before Sojiro’s masterpiece was going to come to fruition - after a years’ worth of constant negotiations, visits from child protective services and working himself to the bone to provide for his three adoptive children, he was going to send them to school._

_He’d finally managed to strike an agreement with Kobayakawa, the portly director of Shujin Academy, to finally give the three an education. He had left early in the morning to officially sign the papers at the school itself, leaving Ren, Futaba and Ryuji to run the café in the meantime._

_It had been a bizarre sort of confusion when Ren saw a police officer step inside the café._

_“You Ren, Ryuji and Futaba Sakura?”_

_Ren gave the officer a curt nod._

_“I think you should sit down for this.”_

_The confusion turned into a giant pit in his stomach. Before the officer even broke the news, Futaba began to let out an almost inaudible whine. The saddest sound in the world. Pitiful and terrifying at the same time._

_He could feel his pulse rise with every breath he took. He knew that whatever the officer was going to say, it was going to hurt. It was like someone held a knife at the aeorta of his heart and was slowly pressing it in._

_Ryuji was squeezing his knuckles well beyond the point of white, his nails digging into his skin and drawing blood. Ryuji reacted to everything he disliked with anger, but one glance told Ren that his adoptive brother was close to tears._

_The police officer could barely bring himself to say it, his tone obviously wavering._

_“But- but he was just-”_

_Futaba couldn’t finish her sentence. But Ren understood what she meant to say, implicitly._

_But he was just here this morning. Alive. He was here. He was okay._

_Futaba had cried, wailed non-stop for the entire rest of the day._

_She wouldn’t eat._

_She wouldn’t talk._

_She wouldn’t move._

_She wouldn’t even sleep._

_She just kept crying… and crying and crying._

If it hadn’t been for Morgana, well… He was still confident that he could’ve gotten Futaba out of her shell, or that she would eventually get out of it on her own. He had faith in his adoptive little sister, and that faith was entirely ironclad.

But that was still a raw wound, one that hadn’t healed properly even years later, after Sojiro’s house had been sold and everything they owned had been put into the café so the three could afford to live on the money Leblanc brought in.

And every day, after closing up shop, Ren wondered if he was as good at running Leblanc as Sojiro was.

* * *

When Yusuke Kitagawa finally came back out of the university hospital after having woken up there, stepping back out into Shibuya felt like an alien place. Come to think of it, he had always practically sleep-walked through the place when he was still under Sen-

When he was under _Madarame’s_ tutelage.

He never did pay too much attention to the things around him, his mind too focused on his next piece, his next offering to the altar of the Master Artist. Now?

Now all Yusuke could do was look around him, and a chilling feeling set itself in his heart when he did.

Had Tokyo always felt empty, this… lonely? Once he would have gripped firm on that feeling and turned it into something, but now… now the very thought of it disgusted him. The idea of it was like a slithering snake in his throat, a clump around his heart.

He couldn’t stay here.

It felt like his spirit was being gnawed at by ghosts. An unwelcome thought wormed its way into his mind - _just how many people had Madarame exploited and driven to forsaking art entirely or worse just to feed his own warped sense of vanity?_

A pang of guilt hit him as he fled down into the nearest metro station. Sure, _he_ had been lucky enough to have his eyes opened and Sens- and _Madarame_ thrown in prison for his crimes of fraud, exploitation and gross negligence of his pupils; but how many hadn’t escaped his vice-grip?

How many had been fodder for his insatiable hunger?

And why was _he_ allowed to escape? Why hadn’t someone else been given that reprieve before him, surely _someone_ else must’ve been just as worth this as he was. Wasn’t there?

...Was he?

Sensei had told him he was worth this. Even as he stole his works, his ideas and drove him to forsaking his own health out of naïve altruism, Sensei had told him that he was his finest pupil.

He had praised him that his brushwork was just as great as his late mother’s. He had fed him lie after lie after lie to keep him compliant… was his art even worth anything? Was it only given attention because it was published under the name of the illustrious Master Artist?

Was Yusuke Kitagawa even worth anything?

It was with these thoughts in mind that Yusuke Kitagawa, lost in the haze of his own thoughts and following the lights of Tokyo, finally collapsed in front of Cafe Leblanc.

Before he lost consciousness, Yusuke Kitagawa’s last thoughts were of his mother.

* * *

Makoto’s earlier leniency towards her squad _immediately_ backfired in her face spectacularly when she realized where the rest of her squad had decided in its fragmented cohesiveness to go celebrate - _the one place she never wanted to show her face again._

The tiny, cozy café in Yongen called Leblanc that served some of Tokyo’s finest coffee and curry. The one café that also happened to have an owner who saw her doze off after making inappropriate comments about her workplace hierarchy.

At this point, she was praying to whoever would listen up there in the heavens that Leblanc would be closed today. Maybe the owner was sick and couldn’t serve his patrons. Maybe the whole mess with Madarame was too much for them.

Just please, _anything_ that could keep her away from that place.

But her hopes were dashed when The Squad (she’d started to capitalize them in her head whenever they were out of Cop-mode and in Day Off-mode) led by Togo Hifumi, that dirty _traitor_ who loudly announced that today they relaxed.

In the middle of a busy evening. On the street.

Forget the coffee, Makoto was hoping that Leblanc served strong alcohol.

As if reading her mind, Kawakami promptly replied in annoyance at Hifumi’s outburst, “I need a drink.” Mishima allowed himself a little chuckle at his nominal superior’s exasperation. “You always say that.”

“I wonder if they serve any sweets there,” Takamaki followed. “I could use some cute-looking cookies in plastic bags.”

“They probably taste like crap,” Shiho said, amused, setting Takamaki off as the group rounded the corner to the street down which Leblanc lay. “It’s the atmosphere, Shiho! The food isn’t anything special but the experience is what matters!”

“You’ve been reading too many food blogs.”

“So?! They’re right!”

It was in some ways a good thing that Makoto was distracted. If she’d been at her best, she might have noticed the small spy camera mounted on the top of the street sign they just passed.

Meanwhile, in Leblanc, Futaba broke the mood. Ren had been dabbing Yusuke's face with a damp cloth while Ryuji held him upright in one of their booths. At their adoptive sister’s scream of “Five-Oh! Five-Oh!”, Ren had to act fast.

“Futaba, get behind the counter! Ryuji, we’re getting this skinny artist up the attic!”

“WHAT?! NO, I’M NOT GOING TO-”

“NO TIME, FUTABA!” She had to dolphin-dive towards the kitchen immediately after Ren yelled at her again, because otherwise he and Ryuji would have bowled her over as they speed-carried the unconscious artist up the stairs.

“Uhhhh, uhhhhHHHH-” was all she managed to say as she got up, scrambled to put an apron on and took the deepest breath in her life as she saw the two forms of Ann Takamaki and Suzui Shiho open the door to Leblanc.

_Okay Futaba, deep breaths. Deep breaths. Ren is counting on you now. He’ll be down in a second. Just act normal. Act normal. Act normal. I’m normal. I’m the normalest normal normie._

“Hello!” Takamaki and Shiho said in tandem, gave two perfectly in-sync “hello” waves of the hand and walked up to the counter.

“...uhhh… hello! Welcome to… to...” In her attempt to be as normal as normal could be, Futaba managed to forget the normal knowledge of knowing what the café they lived in was called.

“Leblanc?”

“Yes! Yes, welcome to Leblanc!”

_Nailed it!_

She stood there, with a smile on her face as silence reigned for an entire ten seconds before Futaba realized what had gone wrong.

“I’msorryI’msupposedtotakeyourorder-” and then she promptly crouched down and hid behind the counter, to the great confusion of Takamaki and Shiho as Futaba just poofed out of view.

_I’ve blown it, they think I’m super suspicious now, I’m gonna go to jail and never see my brothers again-_

As she was neck-deep into a panic attack - as if sensing her distress, Morgana came trotting out from the booth Futaba had left him in alongside her laptop, but stopped to notice the two strangers in the café.

Not wasting a second, Ann let out a coo of pleased surprise and walked over to the stairs, forgetting entirely about Futaba for the time being. As Morgana took a step towards them, Ann went down on her knees to pet the incredibly adorable cat.

“You’re so soft and cuuuuteee~”

“Mrow!”

“Uh, Ann? What about the-”

The moment Makoto and the rest of the unit came in through the door to see Ann excitedly play with a cat became a rather awkward one.

“Aww, you’re so adorable~” Ann continued, not paying attention to anything else at that time. “What’s your name?”

“His name is Morgana,” Futaba said involuntarily, practiced as an explanation to whoever asked her. “He’s my licensed therapy cat.” At the sound of her voice, Morgana immediately left Ann’s soft, slender fingers to cuddle up to the distressed introvert.

“Oh,” Ann breathed, her earlier joy replaced by a sombre sense of understanding. “I-I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.”

“It’s fine.” Futaba’s tone of voice was entirely mono, talking like a robot. It didn’t ease Ann’s conscience very well, nor that of the rest of the squad.

Which was frankly for the best, because it meant they didn’t see Futaba’s laptop in the booth, its screens still showing the footage from the spy cameras the Thieves had set up.

When Ren came down the stairs and saw that, he felt a chill go down his back. “Futaba?” he said, immediately making his adoptive sister seek refuge behind him, using him like a wall between her and all the strangers.

A moment passed, where Ren decided to choose his words very carefully.

“My apologies for not being at the counter, I was just upstairs. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

“Oh no, it’s fine,” Shiho said diplomatically, putting her hand on Ann’s shoulder to comfort her friend.

“Thank you for being understanding,” Ren replied with his finest imitation of Sojiro. “Get your laptop and head upstairs, Futaba. You’ll be fine.”

Futaba was sluggish, almost lethargic with her movements as she collected her laptop and trudged up the stairs, Morgana following close behind. As he put on his apron, Ren thanked his lucky stars that they hadn’t seen what was on the screen.

“All right,” Ren said, elegantly sliding behind the counter in a way that was frankly only seen in anime, “-welcome to Café Leblanc. What can I get you lovely ladies this evening?”

And barring a grumble from Mishima, the mood did a full 180 degrees. The charismatic barista was back, the warbling of the curry pot was there and the coffee beans came together like magic.

* * *

_The team had done it again. Not only had we stolen one of the world’s most famous works of japanese art, we managed to do it in front of a crowd of onlookers… and one very cute police officer. And with the Tokyo Metropolitan still in the dark as to how we pulled it off, we got away with it scot-free._

_Madarame… wasn’t so lucky._

_Following his public assault of his only pupil, Tokyo’s finest raided his shack and found the room full of copies of the Sayuri. That was bad enough but then the pupils he threw away started to pop up. They’d share their stories and detail their abuse, and it all just piled on. When it rains, it pours._

_They gave him thirty years in prison for over a dozen cases of neglect, verbal and physical abuse, not to mention the high-profile art fraud. Frankly, it might as well have been a life sentence._

_As for us? Well… once he’d woken up, we dropped the bomb on Yusuke. He spent a couple of days here at Leblanc until he made up his mind._

_And then… we were four._

**_Fox, as…_ **

**THE ARTIST**


End file.
